“Kalashnikov stole our shotgun!”

The independent US game studio Ward B, which is working on a multiplayer shooter called “Oceanic”, has made serious allegations against the Russian weapons manufacturer Kalashnikov. He used the gun designs of the game studio without permission, brought a very real shotgun onto the market and then licensed it to another game developer to make matters worse. “You stole it completely,” accuses Ward B of the armaments company.

The case was picked up by the game magazine “IGN”: According to the report, Ward B had been promoting its upcoming multiplayer shooter since 2019 and repeatedly published futuristic weapon designs that appear in the game on the game’s website Kalashnikov man offered cooperation At the beginning of 2020, a man from Russia contacted the studio, reports studio boss Marcellino Sauceda. He claimed to be a partner of the Kalashnikov group and to want to license the design of a shotgun from “Oceanic”. He promised a cooperation: the studio logo should appear on the shotgun, there should be airsoft and toy variants of the weapon and the studio should receive three shotguns as gifts. Ward B saw an opportunity: the independent studio could advertise make good use of his shooter, and it would have been one of the first collaborations of its kind. But then contact with the Russian was broken. A few months later, the studio boss recalls, one of his designers came to his place and asked: “Hey, did you build our shotgun after all?” He showed Sauceda a product announcement from the Kalashnikov group. It was – see video above – a “smart” shotgun called the MP-155 Ultima, the design of which was strikingly reminiscent of the EPM28 Mastodon from your computer game. The game developers fell from all over the world. Kalashnikov referred to Russian designers.They were again looking for contact with the man from Russia and with lawyers from the Kalashnikov group. Even copyright injunctions have been initiated. But the person opposite said that the design had not been stolen. Rather, they teamed up with a Russian designer who completely redesigned the smart shotgun with on-board computer. Even a patent was submitted: “I was afraid that nothing would come back. They stole it completely, ”accuses the game developer. He also reports that after the legal proceedings, anonymous e-mails – he suspects, from the original contact in Russia – were received by the studio’s designers, who were still looking for an agreement. Real shotgun appeared in another game in vain. And as if that weren’t enough, the real Kalashnikov shotgun, which the weapons manufacturer sells for the equivalent of around 1500 euros, appeared a few months later in another computer game: the multiplayer shooter “Escape from Tarkov”, developed in Russia, one of them Licensing deal with Kalashnikov was entered. According to a video on the Kalashnikov channel on YouTube, the “Escape from Tarkov” developers were even at the gun manufacturer’s shooting range. A slap in the face for the US studio Ward B: From the studio’s point of view, its intellectual property was first stolen, the theft then denied and the stolen property finally licensed to a Russian competitor. The other side denies this, of course. Lawyer no longer believes in an agreementIn an interview with “IGN”, the lawyer commissioned by Ward B is resigned: She does not believe that an agreement will be reached with the arms manufacturer in the cross-border case, explains lawyer Micaela Mantegna. Small independent developers like Ward B, in particular, would again and again be victims of such actions and would not have the opportunity to legally defend themselves against them, as large corporations have to buy. One thing is certain after the legal dispute: The indie project “Oceanic” is now much better known than before …

Reference-www.krone.at