Call of Duty STOLE the AK-50?
(www.youtube.com)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (26)
sorted by:
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.
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.
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.