"At least name it after me": Activision accused of copying new Call of Duty skin from Dr DisRespect's upcoming game

Activision and Call of Duty are once again in the news for the wrong reasons. A new skin for Vanguard and Warzone, called Doomsayer, has been called out for having an uncanny resemblance to a character model created by a former employee.

Bowling took to Twitter after Activision released the skin and sarcastically asked the publisher to do the basic courtesy of naming it after him:

The accusation comes just weeks after Activision was accused of plagiarizing the Floof Fury skin for Call of Duty: Warzone. The company has since apologized for the "misstep" and has removed the imagery from the game.

However, Activision has not yet commented on the accusations surrounding the Doomsayer skin.

How Call of Duty's Doomsayer skin and Deadrop's Four Zero Two variant are similar

Dr DisRespect and the Midnight Society company are now working on a "vertical extraction shooter" called Deadrop.

The community has been actively supporting the project from the beginning. Some even got Deadrop Founders Passes, which give them access to 10,000 variants (distinctive in-game NFT characters randomly given to the founders).

In a tweet on July 1, Robert Bowling shared one of the variants on his feed, welcoming the chosen few who would get access to the tokenized characters.

The character in the short video shares a lot of similarities with the recently announced Doomsayer skin in Call of Duty. Both have a neon holographic skull with a hood. This has led many to believe the skin is a ripoff of the variant posted last month.

In fact, Bowling is a former employee of Activision. He was a creative strategist for Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward before joining forces with Dr DisRespect and founding gaming studio Midnight Society. What's more, the alleged plagiarized model is literally his Twitter profile picture.

On August 15, Activision released their new Tracer Pack: Malware Ultra skin bundle, which includes the Doomsayer skin, for an operator named Shigenori Ota.

The skin, especially the one for Vanguard, is strikingly similar to the NFT variant titled Four Zero Two, which incidentally is also Bowling's Twitter tag.

Twitter outrage

Call of Duty fans realized something was off pretty soon. They began tweeting at the director of Midnight Society to take a look at what many felt was a plagiarized version of their asset:

Granted, the neon skull aesthetic cannot be tied to one game in particular. However, the hood and holographic bony skull do look very similar to Deadrop's Variant.

About the author

Richik has been specializing in streamer content at Sportskeeda for over 2 years. He also manages a group of writers who craft relevant news and features about content creators on platforms like Twitch, Kick, and Rumble. Prior to Sportskeeda, he interned at The Ken and worked as a reviewer at Blacksof where he fact-checked educational content.

Richik’s love for writing, researching, and archiving, along with his inquisitive nature and longstanding love for video games led him to pursue a career as a gaming journalist. He relies on primary sources for accurate information and ensures that his drafts are proofread, fact-checked, and well-researched.

As a child, Richik spent many a summer vacation playing the 1994 Road Rash with his cousins. Although more of an FPS and open-world fiend now, Richik enjoys single-player RPGs with compelling storytelling, such as The Last of Us franchise, and regularly teams up with his friends to play multiplayer titles like Valorant on PC.

Richik enjoys watching streamer and former esports athlete Shroud, and also finds inspiration in MrBeast's journey to become one of the most well-known content creators worldwide. Interviewing English-Somali YouTuber Sharky, a member of the renowned Beta Squad, was a career highlight for him.

When not writing, Richik likes to read, watch a movie or a game of football.

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