Chinese MMO Caught Copying Assets from Ragnarok Online, World of Warcraft
As pointed out by Kotaku, IGG--the Western publisher of Aurora Blade--has already posted a statement on the Aurora Blade forums: "We would like to explain that SkyUnion(IGG) is not responsible for the developing of the game, that is any character, artwork and graphic is developed by another company and this game is HOSTED by IGG." Curiously, the IGG Team has also cross-posted its message on the Ragnarok Online forum, which includes a threat of an IGG forum ban for posting on the similarities.
We took a look at Aurora Blade's skill icons and compared them to World of Warcraft's, finding many suspicious similarities--a few of which we've illustrated in a simple chart (above, right).
The controversy is similar to last summer's Majestic Studios debacle, where the small developer was found to have stolen numerous assets from several big-budget games for use in its adventure title Limbo of the Lost.
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poindexter1985
replyHonestly, some of the WoW examples are kind've pushing it (they're extremely generic images to begin with), but the Ragnarok Online rip-offs are pretty blatant.
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You have to be kidding me. You could have created the Aurora images by tracing over the Ragnarok examples in almost every case. They only changed a couple superficial details.
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Totally. That starfish, with it's FIVE limbs. I mean c'mon! Complete rip-off. Or the big beast with fur standing on it's hind legs. Ragnarok created that mythical creature. And don't even get me started on the monkey. WAIT! Maaaybe Ragnarok stole the monkey idea from that movie Planet of the Apes?????? First time I ever heard of a monkey.
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The clock's hands are in the exact same position, as are its feet.
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[deleted]
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lol, are you being sarcastic?
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I agree. The icons look like they were created from scratch and just have a similar layout of the WoW ones, which I mean really two blades touching each other, a mouth, etc... These are pretty generic concepts, I admit they are similar but I don't think they really copied them.
Now the other ones, they look like someone took the original art into photoshop and then modified them to look a bit different or at least used them as a base for new art.
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