Some War Z Images Were Ripped From The Walking Dead

Kotaku: "As promised, the strange saga of War Z just keeps getting stranger. Turns out this promo screen for zombie survival game, which was pulled from Steam earlier today, was plagiarized from The Walking Dead."

[ExCest]

Shame. The art looked nice. At least they could've changed their positions and faces. Would that be so hard?

This sh!t storm gets worse and worse and more and more entertaining to read.

[camel_toad]

Wow.

[ABizzel1]

Same. I haven't heard anything about this game, but negative news isn't the first thing you want gamers to hear.

[FriedGoat]

I don't know why anyone would buy this game? If you had even a shred of knowledge you'd know DayZ is all you need.

[PurpHerbison]

Not attacking you Friedgoat, but my shred of knowledge keeps me away from both titles. I don't put up with excessive amounts of bugs.

[SamPao]

hue? the artist drew that piece...guess what, When I draw something I watch things as they are, I take inspiration of them, THATS HOW IT WORKS, you cant just paint things you dont know how they are. the pics are great and yeah inspiration and draw-off. but not ripped man....

[ExCest]

Sure, I draw too, as a past-time. I admit, I take "inspiration" from what I see. BUT, do I copy what I see? No, I take the idea and morph it into something original that I can call my own.

Downright copying in a different form is ripping. Taking what you see and changing (notice: CHANGING) it into your own is "taking inspiration".

[BuLLDoG909]

i wonder if there is infact ANYTHING original about this "game"

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

lol this game needs to go to hell.

[BanBrother]

Or........ it could continue to exist, and keep making us piss ourselves at how tragically bad this shit-wreck has became.

This train was de-railed long ago, but for some reason it is still going. Skating on thin ice? LMFAO.

[Enemy]

Cool, now they'll be sued by the creators of The Walking Dead and AMC as well.

[Sashamaz]

Usually they hire some external artist to do these things so I wouldn't really put the lame with the developers. I don't watch the walking dead so I didn't even know these images were plagiarised, I'm assuming whoever allowed these images to go up might not have known either. Not defending the developers but not jumping to conclusions either.

[Reverent]

You don't watch The Walking Dead? Shame on you sir. Just kidding of course, although it really is a great show, even if you're not a zombie fanatic.

[Vladplaya]

I am pretty sure the devs just ripped of the images themselves, because from sound of it, they are too cheap to hire anyone to do work for them. Its not normal game developers, its just bunch of pricks who know how to code, who decided to make a quick buck by putting bare minimum into their "game".

[crossunitedfate]

Since Walking Dead is their intellectual property in the first place.

AMC has the rights from them to make the show
Telltale has the rights from them to make the games
This Warz developer group have no rights at all so... lol

[WarThunder]

So?

There are lots of games who ripped one another..

Kotaku with their stupid useless articles as always....

[ExCest]

"There are lots of games who ripped one another.. "

So articles about them are worthless? Spreading information is useless to us?

I also don't get why people hate Kotaku so much. It's hardly a news site but a blog. A blog of opinion and whatnot. I also thought it presented itself as such as well. Their "articles" are mainly opinion pieces.

[WarThunder]

When a big budget game rips off another game (made by a small dev.) Those well known gaming sites/blog don't say nothing about it...

but when it comes to a small dev they attack them from all places. Its a f**king image! big deal!

Spreading information only what they want.

[porkChop]

This is a straight rip, not like most games where things are just very similar. This is literally just taking photos from The Walking Dead and pasting them into the games artwork.

[shadowraiden]

this aint the point of the article read it you dumbass before coming out with your nonsense.

they have clearly copied and pasted assets from another copyrighted material and used them as their own this is pure copyright theft.

while the whole ripping from other games aint the same since thats how this industry works its the fact they have blatantly used assets from another company and tried to use them as their own.

[annus]

Do you understand copyright? This isn't "they have a zombie game so it's a copy" this is "they TOOK images from the walking dead and put them in their art". They didn't ask to use images from a show and used it to help advertise their game.

I'd like some examples of "There are lots of games who ripped one another.. " that isn't just an idea like "they are both zombie FPSs".

[Norrison]

Stop defending this shitty ass dev, their poor excuse of a game is pretty much a war inc. mod, they make fake promises, have you seen the gamespy interview? These devs really crossed the line, they should be sued and this shitty game should be shut down.

You already have to buy this game, but you have to PAY more to respawn faster, what the hell?

[Flipgeneral]

Can't believe the amount of disagrees this guy is getting..

So they used a few images of FAN gatherings as inspiration. And they used ONE image of a zombie from the show as a template.

Mob mentality at it's finest!!

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, screw the devs and their shoddy product, but this article is grasping at straws here...

[cleft5]

These guys are about to find out that you do need a brain in order to go for a money grab.

[Fatty]

Wow, yet another copyright infringement suit in the making. Too bad they're not in the US and unlikely to actually get an enforceable sanction.

[Old McGroin]

Not 100% rips but pretty similiar alright! Enjoying this saga as it unfolds :) After hearing some of the details about the complete arrogance and greed of this developer (pay real cash to respawn quicker!!WTF!!) this game has my permission to die.

[OneAboveAll]

LOL @ how shitty this game and it's creators are. Nothing but a bunch of scumbag wankers.

[WeskerChildReborned]

Man these devs are just making themselves look worse.

[aliengmr]

Well its not that big of a deal, I doubt it infringes on any copyrights.

Still funny, watching this go down.

[aliengmr]

Any of the disagrees care to lay an actual case for copyright infringement? I'm willing to hear you out.

Sure its bad form, but from what I have seen there is enough of a difference as to not violate the copyright.

Also, compared to the rest of the crap they pulled, you can't honestly believe this is really that big of an issue.

[stumpa]

Don't know wether i should be happy or sad that i've got more important things in life to worry about like what shirt to wear what to have for dinner etc. i mean isnt one zombie the same as another ??

[r40k213]

Oh, that was a disappointing article. I was expecting ripped as in copypasted. It's not so much "ripped" as "used as an uncredited photo reference." Down to using buzzwords for extra hits are we Kotaku?

[DarthJay]

No, this was completely ripped off in every sense of the word. It wasn't inspired by or parodied, it was literally copy and pasted into Photoshop, maybe reverse a negative and artify it and them blam, done.

And there isn't even a debate. That is literally how it went down.

[aliengmr]

Those are not exact copies. The photos may have been used but its NOT a direct "copy/paste" job.

Please, the last thing I want is to defend these asshats, but copyright infringement isn't that easy to prove.

There is barely enough info on the photos themselves. Not every single image automatically has a copyright attached to it. Its a pretty weak case when you look at it objectively.

The misleading Steam page was FAR worse than this.

[DarthJay]

Actually, it looks like it is exactly what you said it's not: a copy and paste job. I've watched people take pictures and turn them into that.

At absolute worst, they absolutely looked at those pictures and copied them completely. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. It happened.

[Rebo00]

Ridiculous that people on the article site are commenting that they aren't exact copies just used Walking Dead for inspiration!!!
To be fair they did mirror a couple of the images they robbed to make it slightly different...

[Horny Melon]

If you are going to tear into a company for doing shit like this it should be gearbox with borderlands.......straight up ripped off an artists whole look and feel AFTER consulting with him and hanging a dangling a job in front of him, then you rip off every comedian and 4chan meme, and a couple more artists on your way through borderlands 2

[TemplarDante]

War Z = fraud.
Glad Valve is giving out refunds. Its true, the best things in life are free : Day Z :)

[solar]

HAHA!! there is a WarZ add in the background for me. No thanks!

[DarthJay]

I honestly don't think I've ever seen a game with this much controversy. Everything about this game just stinks. The sad part is, I am sure there is an enjoyable game wrapped up in there, but this is the epitome of capitalizing on a trend, and they did it the laziest way possible. I am glad to see it backfire.

They even called it WarZ to create confusion. I honestly didn't follow anything about this game until the shizzle started to hit the fan, and I assumed it was somehow related to DayZ or that movie that's coming out, and that is exactly what these devs wanted.

Again, they deserve all of this. Internet justice can be quick and vengeful. You don't do the things they've done or treat people the way they have and expect to simply get away with it.

[ChR0n1k]

I was starting to feel like some of this negative publicity was just to get publicity. I hate that kind of shoddy marketing practice. Its like the Kardashians of video games lol.

[legend911]

Soon the War-Z will be extremely successful if they keep this up. These ranting children will have it work against them and the War-Z will start getting positive hype from the amount of people seeing a new game in the market. And then they will realize that the devs just didn't have the features in time which they will add in due time with their updates. The people who lose out? The people ranting right now.

[Valenka]

War Z is like I said previously, just one big rip off.

[ChR0n1k]

C'mon guys, these are close but not the exact images used in the art work. Artists use stuff for inspiration all the time, when you think of zombies where do you go? Walking Dead!

Agree these are similar, but not a rip off. Everyone is just going to start nitpicking every little thing they can find about The War Z in the next few days to come...

If only the game wasn't fun I could hate it more.

[DirtyLary]

What a silly argument. shady devs, yes but stolen, nah.

[i8urCAKE]

lol this game is getting soo much hate. yet i still play it despite the frustrations i get

[legend911]

Just because their features weren't up to snuff in time on Steam it doesn't mean it's a WarZ hate-fest.

[KingKevo]

That's more serious than the Borderlands 2 image that was stolen earlier this year. Shame on the developers, it's hard to fail more than them, they have done everything wrong so far, including the game itself.

[Klopek]

I didn't know Limbo of the Lost had a sequel.

[Bonerboy]

And why am I not surprised at this move? These guys have ripped off every idea and gamer as well at every opportunity.