Call of Duty: Warzone gets Samoyed dog skin, artist says it’s plagiarized

Activision’s latest update for Call of Duty: Warzone will bring the Terminator — both Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 and Robert Patrick’s T-1000 — to the battle royale-style shooter. Season 4 will also feature the Terminator. Warzone is everyone’s favorite giant floofy dog breed, the Samoyed, thanks to a new skin for Call of Duty operator Kim Tae Young.

Scoring headshots as a Samoyed should be cause for celebration, but an artist says that the “Loyal Samoyed” skin for Warzone: Call of DutyIt was plagiarized from a concept they had created themselves more than two years earlier. It appears, therefore, that the allegation was true. Warzone: Call of DutyRaven Software, developer has taken images that reference the Loyal Samoyed makeup from its site. (The original version of Raven’s blog about WarzoneTwo images of Samoyed were included in season 4. These images have been replaced by the current version.

Concept artist Sail Lin uploaded artwork of their character, “Samoye Medical,” to the website ArtStation in December 2019. Friday the artist took to TwitterActivision and Raven Software allegedly plagiarized this piece of work, without their permission and without payment.

“Even though I am also a COD player, I am very disappointed to see my work being plagiarized by a big company like Activision in this way,” the artist wrote. “I have reached out to Activision for an explanation and/or compensation, and hopefully the situation will be settled soon. As an individual artist, I can only do so much, and I have to speak out about this to stop thins like this happening again in the future.”

Sail Lin cited a video on YouTube from The COD Inspector, which shows the content of the Floof Fury Tracer Pack as evidence. These videos show clear similarities between Samoye Medical artworks and in-game models for Loyal Samoyed skin.

Raven Software/Activision.

It’s not clear yet how Raven and Activision plan to address the allegation, other than to currently downplay promotion of the Floof Fury Tracer Pack. Tweet from Raven’s Twitter accountThis Wednesday’s Samoyed skin feature was up as of today. The developer has not yet publicly responded to the claim. Polygon reached out Activision to provide comment. We will post updates when Activision responds.

Warzone: Call of Duty’s alleged artwork transgression isn’t unique in the world of games. Paradox Interactive and Sony Interactive Entertainment Publishers have been accused by artists of taking artwork or photos. It is common for these publishers to work with large volumes of assets and third-party contractors without properly verifying the source of certain assets.