Activision Issues DMCA Takedown Against Trek Industries' Orion

Sometimes indie developers have no class or creativity for that matter. Take, for example, Trek Industries' open-world sci-fi shooter Orion, which has recently been pulled from Steam. Why?

Well, Activision went after it like a pack of hunting dogs and sent a DMCA takedown request.

Yeah, it's that bad. Long story short, the game uses some assets from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

According to the request:

"On behalf of Activision, who alleges that the game Orion uses weapon art content from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The weapon art in question includes the M8A7 rifle, the Haymaker rifle, and the Bal-27 rifle."

The response?

"This is extremely serious that a DCMA request has removed our entire game from sale, during the biggest sale event of the year. Apparently no cross-checking was done by our Parnter, who we've been with for over 5 years and I have seen better and would expect better from them. At minimum, to contact us regarding our assets/defense before taking action.

We've made Steam our primary platform, but this has put a definite scare into us going forward considering our entire livelihood can be pulled without a moments notice, without any warning or proper verification. I cannot even confirm that the representative from Activision is a real person as absolutely no results pop up in any of my searches.

We have worked VERY hard for many years to not only ensure our community and products were great and supported, but we made sure that we were doing a great service to Steam as a platform and programs like Early Access. This is extremely evident in any of our Product reviews.

We need everyones help and support to rectify this immediately as this erroneous claim has already costed what is a very small team a significant amount of money and we need it remedied ASAP so we can get back to work on real content, something that Activision should take note of.
#OrionNeedsYou
#LookWhosScared
#SteamWTF"

Maybe it's best to look for yourself at Reddit's postings of the images. If you can tell, they really do look similar.

Now, Polygon reached out to Trek Industries' David Prassel, who stated:

"The sight is the only similarity we can see. Even if it was a 1:1, that's not enough for a design infraction, even by legal standards and by a significant amount.

And the sight is just a futuristic M1 Garand, so either way both are ripping off a real world property, the only thing that could actually hold up and is the only one without a dog in this fight.

If anything you can argue the gun on the left is different enough, no gap on the rail, no racking bolt, missing bolts on the upper, the markings, even the actual body of the gun is quite different, the rails and front sights look very similar to the M14.

Regardless, an invalid and malicious act from Activision on wrong or non-existant [sic] evidence. They are are multi-billion dollar company coming over what is currently a 50 cent game, without contacting us or requesting anything of us NOR providing any specific assets or images of the offensive content to begin with

That being said, if our community finds our weapons or content offensive we are of course always listening and will integrate feedback/suggestions based on such. If you want weapons changed, we are a developer that reads what you write. This is where we are most different when compared to Activision."

So who is in the right here?

Well, we don't know for sure, but I feel as if both are in the wrong. Activision should have at least warned the developers first.