Artist Says Their Drawing Turned up in Fortnite

Epic added a ton of new content for the Fortnitemares update, with a major collab coming just before, KPop Demon Hunters. However, one item in that collab has caused big problems. An artist on reddit has noticed its extremely similar to their own art, and another Fortnite Plagiarism scandal might be looming. While nothing is confirmed, there is a clear resemblance. Although, the art in question is of a specific character. Has Epic stolen someone’s art as part of the Demon Hunters collab?

In that Fortnite collab, we got a bunch of KPop Demon Hunters items added into Battle Royale. They also stuck around in the new Demon Rush Horde mode. While they aren’t in Battle Royale anymore, the Fortnitemares stuff took over there, they are still in the game in some modes. With tournaments still having a few of these items, including the mask. It’s making for an interesting meta in a period that could just be leftover weapons.

However, the mask might not stick around for the entire season. With an artist claiming that art behind this mask in an emoticon might be plagiarized. What’s happened and how has Epic responded?

Fortnite Plagiarism – Is the Art and Emoticon Stolen?

One of the KPop Demon Hunters items that’s stuck around is the Tiger’s Teleporting Mask. This item works pretty much the same as the Void Mask we saw in an older Fortnite season, Chapter 6 Season 1. It lets players shoot off a portal then teleport through it. The Tiger’s Teleporting Mask has been a part of the loot pool for Ranked, and the tournament meta of teleporting is a change of pace. But with this Fortnite plagiarism accusation it could get complicated. While the mask itself isn’t linked, it’s very close to some art that has been.

A digital artist has taken to the Fortnite reddit to explain. This is a community frequented by both fans of the game, and in some cases, Epic representatives. The mask in-game is also an emoticon, which uses a more cartooney version of the face. Although, since it’s all based on an animated film, there is only so much freedom in how it can look. However, Epic seems to have produced that looks extremely similar to this existing art.

The artist, Mimicoo or @jessejamesho, originally published the art in June, so it’s been available for quite a while! They’ve said they’ve taken action, but Epic did not get involved until they went to social media. In a post on reddit, the artist said “I submitted a copyright (DMCA) claim to Epic Games explaining the situation and providing evidence, but my claim was rejected. I asked for a detailed explanation, but they never replied or provided any reason for the rejection. “

With no response from Epic for what looked like Fortnite plagiarism, they went to social media to make fans aware. Which seems to have at least gotten a reaction.

Epic Responds, Kind of

After their initial response, the situation started getting too much attention for Epic to ignore. They have now responded, but they’ve not exactly cleared things up. Their official response from the TheFortniteTeam reddit account, was “Hey… we saw this post and we’ll be reaching out to you in a few days.”

It seems Epic will be in touch about the Fortnite plagiarism accusations. The big question might be, is the art actually stolen though? It looks extremely similar, but does have differences, and is a fairly simple design of an established character’s face.

Some have pointed out that this is an art of a copyrighted character, which is licensed by Epic. There are some differences between Fortnite’s emoticon version and the original. It could be a case of art which happens to look similar since they’re both depicting the same character. In any case it seems like this might be an issue which is settled privately, whatever that means for the artist.