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EA rip off Warhammer designs

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polycounter lvl 19
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hawken polycounter lvl 19
Looks like someone is in trouble:

eawh.jpg

from Command & Conquer, Tiberium Alliances

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  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    I saw a larger version of this earlier. It's very convincing.
  • Slum
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    Slum polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah, if you look at the bigger images, every detail is 1:1 ripped off both vehicles.

    Somebody is going to be looking for a job soon.
  • Emperors Teeth
    Whoops... not often I cheer for GW in a legal area, but be nice to see EA lose, too.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    could you guys link a largerer 'mage here pls?
  • Baaaah!
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    Baaaah! polycounter lvl 10
    Trouble's brewin :P
  • Emperors Teeth
  • DeadlyFreeze
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    DeadlyFreeze polycounter lvl 17
    They did do warhammer online, who knows what licensing EA still has their hooks in.
  • teaandcigarettes
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    teaandcigarettes polycounter lvl 12
    Wait, what... "Bonecruncha"? Really? Is that the real name?
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    They did do warhammer online, who knows what licensing EA still has their hooks in.

    Licensing doesn't work like that :P
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    Wait, what... "Bonecruncha"? Really? Is that the real name?

    Orks man, Orks...
    "I'z made a tank for crunchin' bonez... i'z gonna call it bonecruncha!!"
    "I'z gonna paint mine red to make it go fastaaa! WAAAAGH!!!!"
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    Aren't GW particularly litigious as well?
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    yes, yes they are. this should be interesting :D
  • TomDunne
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    TomDunne polycounter lvl 18
    It's amazing to me that an artist working on a popular property like C&C would choose to copy a design that someone else made 20 years ago rather than take the opportunity to create his own bit of awesomeness.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    It's even more amazing this got past any other artist in the studio, and even past legal. Things can be so strict here on that matter, even conceptual ideas need to be checked here at times (like the type of tool/weapon).
  • slipsius
    I'm gonna guess they have the licensing for it. Like a previous comment said, they did the Warhammer mmo.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    slipsius wrote: »
    I'm gonna guess they have the licensing for it. Like a previous comment said, they did the Warhammer mmo.

    Again, most license holders are very detailed and harsh about in what way you can use licenses, and even in the scenario where EA would hold the rights to making warhammer40k games, (which they don't), they still wouldn't be able to just copy paste designs over to a completely different game.

    Nor would it in any way be economically logical to copy something like this and pay a license for it compared to just make up a generic tank design from scratch.
  • gsokol
    uh oh, somebodys in trouble.
  • AzureXIII
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    AzureXIII polycounter lvl 12
    Wow, that very bad. they didn't try to hide it.
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    where's one o' them popcorn gifs...
  • Mark Dygert
    Something tells me a lot of the safety guards that would keep things like this from happening where removed to save money...

    "Free browser based MMO strategy game."
  • Slum
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    Slum polycounter lvl 18
    rooster wrote: »
    where's one o' them popcorn gifs...

    Here, I brought an extra just in case.

    costanzaPopcorn.gif
  • brandoom
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    brandoom polycounter lvl 13
    lol, good job EA.

    I wish they would drop the Command and Conquer/Red Alert franchises.. they've ruined it as far as I'm concerned =\
  • Seirei
    Xoliul wrote: »
    It's even more amazing this got past any other artist in the studio, and even past legal. Things can be so strict here on that matter, even conceptual ideas need to be checked here at times (like the type of tool/weapon).

    Basicly this. How couldn't there even be a single person involved in this that doesn't know the Warhammer 40k universe and not noticing this? It's not that the Baneblade is one of the most outstanding pieces of the imperial army or anything... ^^


    Also wasn't the Warhammer MMO in the fantasy Warhammer universe? I'm pretty sure that having the rights on that doesn't conver anything from Warhammer 40k.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    d'oh, bad idea to brand all your studios as EA <studio name>. Shame on Phenomic for doing this, Warhammer 40k is much more popular and known in Europe.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    Phenomic is German btw.
  • GarageBay9
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    GarageBay9 polycounter lvl 13
    Is it bad that my first concern was that EA had found a new way to sully the C&C franchise by doing some kind of ridiculous Soul Calibur-style marketing department brainchild crossover with WH40k... and that they thought their fans were stupid enough that they wouldn't make the connection from press release art?
  • passerby
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    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    fail to rip-off a warhammer 40k piece uber fail to rip off such a iconic tank, fuck even people who dont follow 40k know what that tank is.
  • Donavonyoung
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    Donavonyoung polycounter lvl 6
    They really are evil aren't they.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    ok guys, don't turn into kotaku/youtube commenters - you really think this is an evil EA conspiracy? John Riccitello's evil plan to piss off GW and get sued?

    Somebody goofed at Phenomic, big time, that's the reason.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Yeah someone was probably a major warhammer fan, pressed for time and thought if I change just enough I'll be ok. They are almost identical BUT they aren't. Isn't that how we get away with making a lot of stuff without having to get permission or license it?

    Not saying this is right but perhaps that is what was in the artists mind at the time....
  • skylebones
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    skylebones polycounter lvl 10
    Yeah someone was probably a major warhammer fan, pressed for time and thought if I change just enough I'll be ok. They are almost identical BUT they aren't. Isn't that how we get away with making a lot of stuff without having to get permission or license it?

    Not saying this is right but perhaps that is what was in the artists mind at the time....

    I'm sure that's exactly what happened.
  • e-freak
    outsourcing and then major fuck up on sign-off and marketing?
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    My guess was outsourcing. The whole project screams outsourcing to me - and the assets themselves are pretty weak (are the tanks made of marzipan?).

    It's pretty disheartening to see how this once mighty franchise has been crippled and left to bleed out and die.
  • PaulP
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    PaulP polycounter lvl 9
    This really isn't EA's year concerning public image. I wonder whats going to happen next :s
  • Weirdboy
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    Weirdboy polycounter lvl 5
    What do you guys think this mean for the game and the team developing it? Do they go forward with it and just change the vehicles around? Or will EA just sell out Phenomic to save face?
  • slipsius
  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    Weirdboy wrote: »
    What do you guys think this mean for the game and the team developing it? Do they go forward with it and just change the vehicles around? Or will EA just sell out Phenomic to save face?

    Of course they'll change it. Some artist cheated, now they've gotta fix it.
  • SgtNasty
    Full disclaimer, I do work at EA at the moment.

    Everyone wants to hate on EA. Totally ridiculous. One dude in Germany makes a mistake (or even more likely, it was outsourced), therefore the entire company gets blamed?

    I saw all the hate on reddit initially, which doesn't surprise me. I was honestly surprised by the reactions here though, I assumed more people would understand how things like this work, why they happen, etc.

    All that said, this is terrible timing... Just when you think the hate fire couldn't be any bigger...

    Edit: On a more interesting note, my job right now is QA for the art team in Vancouver. I can tell you first hand I HAVE seen outsourcers try to sneak stuff into the games. I haven't seen anything on this level, but I have seen little images and things like that hidden in windows and stuff that we've caught and then had to be removed from textures. I have no idea what happened at this studio, it might not have been outsourced, but that would be my first guess.
  • e-freak
    yeah i know a few people at phenomic and usually they know what they're doing and seem to be properly excited about the game. can't imagine this is what they "usually" do.
  • Ace-Angel
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    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    SgtNasty wrote: »
    Full disclaimer, I do work at EA at the moment.

    Everyone wants to hate on EA. Totally ridiculous. One dude in Germany makes a mistake (or even more likely, it was outsourced), therefore the entire company gets blamed?

    I saw all the hate on reddit initially, which doesn't surprise me. I was honestly surprised by the reactions here though, I assumed more people would understand how things like this work, why they happen, etc.

    All that said, this is terrible timing... Just when you think the hate fire couldn't be any bigger...

    Problem is, until we got a name, we only knew EA's name in the comparison pictures, so you can't be really be surprised at people complaining and hating on EA. If we got the real name of the branch company, that people would be hating on them instead.

    Besides, many people here were saying "Oh-oh, EA is in trouble" since GW is known to sue anything that moves that looks like Warhammer without a license. They won't even allow people to mod their games unless they make FULL conversions of a mod.
    Yeah someone was probably a major warhammer fan, pressed for time and thought if I change just enough I'll be ok. They are almost identical BUT they aren't. Isn't that how we get away with making a lot of stuff without having to get permission or license it?

    Not saying this is right but perhaps that is what was in the artists mind at the time....

    Generally yes, but all they really did was remove the symbols from it and sell it as stock. In some cases, this is EXACTLY what the original GW model looks like before custom jobs are applied to the model.

    So for me, it's a not a case of 'someone screwed up', it's case of 'did the artists even put in ANY effort? If no, then why was he/she hired?"?
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    not to knock Chinese outsourcing studios but I have seen some crazy crap come out of giving them leeway. You can go to an in house artist and say "You made all the forgotten tanks so just give us two more, we don't have time to concept it" but pull that with an outsourcer and you're taking a gamble. I've mostly seen this with animation and icon outsourcing.
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    I think that's an interesting side note SgtNasty. With big publishers like EA, Activision and Zenimax having tens and tens of studios under their label. Things like this get slapped with 'EA does this' or 'ACTIVISIONS big blunder'. We might not mind publishers taking the hit for some art QA's mistake, but alot of the time the press and gaming communities gloss over a developers name when referring to a games success.
  • Yozora
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    Yozora polycounter lvl 11
    That applies to pretty much everything in anything. If there's some kind of problem with 1 of Google's products, google gets the blame, not the guy responsible for whatever the problem was. If a patch/update broke something in WoW, the whole of blizzard gets the blame. If there's visible dirt in your mcdonalds/nandos/any restaurant's meal,... etc.

    Plus it makes for better headlines, which generates more hits and gossip.
  • nick2730
    Its not like this thing is close, its almost a direct replica. Maybe gamesworkshop will sue give the money to thq and bail em out lol hope so still got stock in them :-)
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    I have a feeling that since EA & GW already have a business relationship it won't come to a lawsuit. Kind of like when The9 announced the development of a new MMO with Warhammer Online screenshots.
  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    it won't come to a lawsuit unless it's released. Which won't happen.
  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    gotta choose outsourcers with care. The problem is, many of them may not even do it on purpose. You think there's people in the world who never heard of something iconic as Star Wars? Yes, there are! And even though WH is popular, I wouldn't be surprised if many people in Asia never heard about this. Add the common ignorance of copyright law to this - perfect disaster.

    But basically those guys in Asia create art for a culture they are not familiar with. Imagine you'd have to make art for a Chinese target audience and you'd have to get references somewhere.

    That's why your outsourcer should have good QA in place and that's why you, the client, should also review stuff you receive.
  • Two Listen
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    Two Listen polycount sponsor
    Hell not even just in Asia...I don't know anything about Warhammer outside of what I've seen here on polycount. It just never interested me, haha.
  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    although thinking of it, the problem here lies deeper... who chose the concepts? concepts get rarely outsourced. And the concepts are to blame. The outsourcer just does what you pay them for - make it 3D.

    Looks like someone googled something and then they made it 1:1 into 3D. bad practice but i've seen this in happening in western studios too. Producers and concepters are in hurry, let's just go through that catalogue of clothing/whatever and tell some poor sob to model it. Doing 1:1 photo ref modeling is always dangerous unless you're modeling nature.
  • ikken
    SgtNasty wrote: »
    Full disclaimer, I do work at EA at the moment.

    Everyone wants to hate on EA. Totally ridiculous. One dude in Germany makes a mistake (or even more likely, it was outsourced), therefore the entire company gets blamed?

    I saw all the hate on reddit initially, which doesn't surprise me. I was honestly surprised by the reactions here though, I assumed more people would understand how things like this work, why they happen, etc.

    All that said, this is terrible timing... Just when you think the hate fire couldn't be any bigger...

    I sort of get your point here: you work with really cool people, and they're talented artists and managers, and it's an awesome team, that you're projecting our hate onto.

    But there's another point here. The tank in question did all the way up through QA, through several rounds of testing, through art-department and, indirectly, through EA lawyer team as well. No one either mentioned or cared to point the resemblance out.

    Now, if it was outsourced to that German/Polish/Chinese guy, he was working off a concept that also got approved by someone else before. And that guy is also cheap enough to get feedback and remodel parts of this stuff, at least paint a different texture and slap some nuts and bolts on top, to make it look less traced off.

    But no one cared. This thing gets into press, shit hits the fan, and the EA hate machine is back on track.

    The best thing they could have done right now is to issue an official apology and recall the asset in question (and maybe tip the original artist a bit), because an incoming lawsuit will generate much more negative publicity for EA again.

    Same situation in reverse: if a noname Chinese studio copied models from anything as derivative and bland as Dead Space and pushed them in a commercial product, EA would have already sent their blue-collared law hounds.
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