author: Michael Kulakowski
Apex Legends Devs Accused of Plagiarism
The developers of Apex Legends have been accused that the game's newest playable characters is a plagiarism of an existing character featured in the indie shooter BulletVille. The developers have not yet addressed the allegations.
Examples of plagiarism in video game world are not rare, especially when it comes to imitating popular gameplay concepts and designs of characters, boards, objects, or music. Usually, the culprits are small developers copying the work of large studios. Sometimes the biggest devs are caught in the act. According to independent studio NOWWA, which worked on the shooter BulletVille, this happened in the case of Respawn Entertainment and the latest playable character in Apex Legends, Fuse.
The developers claim that Fuse is a copy of their game's space pirate named Hunter. Both men have similar hairstyles, hair colors, jackets, pants and belts, a headband, a mechanical arm, as well as similar personalities. It is worth noting that BulletVille, which is a free-to-play online shooter, is not yet officially available to the players and is still in closed beta. However, the developers claim that members of Respawn's team may have come across their creation last year when BulletVille was showcased at Electronic Arts headquarters.
NOWWA even released a special statement on the matter.
"We are happy that the Apex Legends team liked Hunter’s style to the point of wanting to recreate it in Apex Legends – we were even hoping for an eventual crossover! Nonetheless, we are afraid that, as a small indie game producer whose game hasn’t been launched yet, we’ll be called a ripoff of Apex Legends, which is certainly not true."
Despite the serious doubts, we are most likely dealing with a coincidence here. Both characters are based on popular tropes already present in many other games. The devs at NOWWA should also be more careful in making judgments. Some of BulletVille's characters, for example, are clearly "heavily inspired" by the Overwatch series.
Fuse will appear in Apex Legends on February 2 , with the start of the game's eighth season. He is described as a rather unpredictable individual who loves various types of explosives. According to leaks, his tactical ability will be Airburst Grenade, which will enable the character to launch a grenade from his mechanical arm. His ultimate move, on the other hand, has been dubbed The Motherlode and will enable to use of the cannon on Fuse's back to fire incendiary rounds.
Apex Legends is currently available for free on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It is worth noting that Respawn Entertainment's game is also coming to Switch. It will appear on Nintendo this year.
