Orion’s Situation Continues To Get Sketchier
Steam Greenlight title Orion has recently been involved in a bit of a legal battle with Activision, regarding the content of the game that Spiral Game Studios is working on. According to Activision, Spiral Games stole multiple art-releated assets, with a number of the weapons having purportedly been taken right from Call of Duty: Black Ops III. David James has taken action to protect his product though, noting that there is a sole individual to blame in this case, with the rest of the team remaining free of this action.
The circumstances with this sole person only serves to make the whole matter more interesting. David has posted on the Orion page on Stem, exposing the individual who had stolen his work. He’s also noted this was a move he didn’t want to make, but felt it was necessary to at least save the project instead of having it taken down entirely. The artist in question is named Binh Le, and through all of the interactions between James and Le, the two never met face to face, interacting only over Skype. As James has attempted to gather the scope of what was stolen, Le has cut off all ties/communication, leaving James to try and surmise what all had actually been stolen. A user on reddit illustrated this comparison right here, showing there’s little, if any deviation between the two items. The one response that Le had given before severing all ties was “I have nothing to say in this matter. I’m really sorry this had to happen. I’m out.”.
The artists profile on Artstation.com has since been pulled, but David plans to re-assure those who had gotten the game that the development of Orion is going to resume, and the team is working incredibly hard to help right this wrong, and bring the game out of Steam Early Access. There remains little in terms of further development with this whole situation, but it definitely puts a bad taste in our mouth to hear of one person’s action affecting many. James echoed this sentiment, warning developers to be careful who they hire.