Do I think this will affect sales in any way at all? Nope! But I hope EA does the right thing here and investigates.
Well, this is a bit of a strange one. Indie game dev NOWWA has reached out to me with a rather big claim, that according to them, Respawn’s Apex Legends has “ripped off” the design of its new hero, Fuse, going live February 2, from one of their own characters for their upcoming shooter BulletVille, its main hero, Hunter.
They have a whole case to lay out, which they presented in a Word document, though the main thing is those side by side comparisons you can see above. Past that, NOWWA goes into a bullet point list of exactly what’s similar between the two characters.
- An eyepatch
- A biker attire
- A skull belt
- A mechanical arm
- A moustache
- A belt of grenades
- Gloves
- A necklace
- A vest jacket with circular symbol on the back
- Leg holsters
- A red/grey color scheme
- A characteristic grey stripe of hair
- Hunter has two weapons, a pistol and rocket launcher. Fuse’s ultimate is a rocket launcher
Granted, in this landscape of hero shooters, you are going to see some similar designs over time, and yet something about this does jump out more than usual, not just because of the visual similarities, but also the fact that NOWWA says that they worked with EA on a potential EA Originals deal in 2020, and gave them access to an early build.
