After years of people claiming Paladins copied Overwatch, Hi-Rez Studios president Stew Chisam has accused Blizzard of plagiarism by saying the new hero Brigitte looks almost identical to Paladins' hero Ash.
A unique brand of Paladins vs Overwatch catfight continues, this time over Twitter of Stew Chisam. He has been denying the possibility of Paladins copying Overwatch after the latter's massive success for years, but now he's going on the offensive.
The man was referring to the pointlessness of the entire Paladins vs. Overwatch copycat fight as they were in development at the same time and were released nearly at the same time. Overwatch was released on 24 May 2016 and Paladins landed on 16 September 2016. Three months is not enough to redesign a game, let alone create a complete game that copies Overwatch. Well, it might be enough for Chinese knock-offs but none of them come close in quality when compared to Paladins so that theory is off the table.
Valve, Riot Games
Speaking of copies, technically Queen of Pain could be considered a copy of Elise, since DotA 2 came almost a year after Elise was introduced to LoL's champion pool. Then again, when League of Legends was first released, Ashe was a copy of the Drow Ranger from the original DotA.
So are Riot Games the kettle claiming the pot is black or are IceFrog and Valve the pot saying the kettle is black? Well they're both black, just like both Guinsoo and IceFrog worked on the original DotA. Fact of the matter is that originality does not survive in this age and what keeps players invested into games are the devs' efforts to keep it appealing.
