Call of Duty STOLE the AK-50?
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And they did a shitty job of it in a presentation sense (to be expected)
I mean if they actually consulted Brandon, he'd have probably have helped to make it look WAY cooler.
It might be a rumour, but I swear I remember some other game company reached out about adding it into their game.
He's very chill about the whole thing, too.
Well yeah, he likes his 'baby' getting the attention it deserves..
Still surprised the Russians haven't reached out about a manufacturing licence yet lol.
The creator of the AK-50 comments on his gun appearing in Call of Duty without permission.
This is a weird one since this is a custom built gun, made for entertainment purposes as part of someone's business. It's closer to art than any production model gun and therefore definitely deserves credit before reproducing the design in your own products.
But in a general sense, do game Devs typically even bother asking for permission to use any of the guns in their games anymore?
If they use the actual trademarked name, yes. Many games have guns that look similar to a real life weapons but they'll call it something else to avoid trademark infringement. Here soldier, take this Burata 95 9mm.
Yeah, I remember those days too.
But nowadays it seems like every other game game, even garbage asset flips or little indie shooters, will just use fully legit AKs and M1A4s. I'm trying to figure out if they're really all going to Colt to negotiate trade mark usage or there has just developed a general understanding that they don't care anymore.
I think most guns simply have expired trademarks or were never trademarked in the first place (i.e. foreign military weapons like various AKs). Something newish like a Kriss Vector probably is and in that case, yeah, they either make a deal with the manufacturer or call it a Vriss Kector. I'd definiteky expect for example H&K to go after game devs, because they hate civilians and they're assholes, but for most other manufacturers it's just free advertising unless the gun sucks in a game, I guess.
I want to play a game with only HiPoints.
"Hell yes! I just unlocked the Yeet Cannon!"
🤣
The only gun to my knowledge that Call of Duty had an actual license to use was the Remington ACR back in (classic) Modern Warfare 2. It even had Remington branding on the gun.
Names like M4A1 or AK74-U are military designations, not trademarks from the manufacturer. It would be different if the game had something like a Colt 601 in it.
Good point. They could call it an M4, just not a Knights Armament M4.
I admit my trend in gaming tends to run more... not current, but it always threw me off a little when playing un-modded Stalker and the lengths they went to NOT use the actual names for in-game guns.
Thank goodness for mods.
I mean, there are alot of gun manufacturers that are actual big deals, money wise, so game devs atleast try to paste on a fig-leaf of deniability so as to deflect any legal attention if said companies don't like the association.
Well, they certainly made it faster than Brandon did lol.
Probably because designing, engineering, and manufacturing a high powered rifle to work in semi auto, to emulate a rifle designed to work with a smaller caliber, is more complicated. A game engine doesn't care if the rifle design doesn't work in real life.
Dude, it was a joke because of how long the community harped on Brandon to finish the AK50.
I thought you might be joking, I just wanted to paint the picture clear, just in case you weren't.
It's too bad CoD/Activision/Blizzard are so shit. Brandon is understandably excited about this but, considering who those fuckers have treated other conservatives or controversial figures, not to mention just their baseline business practices, I'd be more pissed if I were in his position.
They're shitty people, which makes them stealing your gun more annoying than cool. If it was a cool company (well, if they were cool they would have asked), that would be one thing. But this is CoD/Activision/Blizzard.
This just seems like an unwarranted sense of self-importance. The concept of a .50 caliber AK isn't exactly unique, and Call of Duty has already implemented a plethora of ammunition conversions.
He does go over several more unique design elements they also mirrored from his, more than just the concept of a conversion to .50 cal. There's an unusual pattern of bolts on the side and the magazine housing that are also nearly identical to his build.
If you watch the video he says he's not interested in suing, thinks it's cool, and would have given both permission and advice if they'd asked.
It's very common for games to copy guns and just give them a new name. Every other shooter these days has a Kriss Vector or an HK MP7.
I'd assume as long as you don't use the trademarked names/logos there's not much the manufacturer can do.
See Goldeneye from 1997 which renamed the FN P90 to RC-P90 amongst a whole slew of other guns. Perfect Dark did similar things including also having the FN P90 but now named RC-P45 in addition to the RC-P120.
Timesplitters 2 also did this with the SBP90.
I miss those games, and when the companies that made them were still those companies. The second Perfect Dark did not deserve to be a sequel to the first which was itself the spiritual successor of Goldeneye, just with everything dialed up to 12 with added bots for pve multiplayer mode.
IRRC that thing had a massive magazine but took ages to get through it. Gimme the K7 Avenger or death! Said death probably being quite soon since the K7 only had 25 shots per mag 😬