Indie Studio Accuses Apex Legends of Stealing Character Design

The human imagination is a fairly limited domain, and it's only natural that, occasionally, people will come up with similar ideas and concepts even if they never meet in real life. True as that may be, according to Indie studio NOWAA, that's not what's happening between Apex Legends and themselves, because they've straight-up accused Respawn Games of stealing their design for Hunter, a "space bandit", and using it for the new character joining the Apex Legends roster, Fuse.
 

"We are happy that the Apex Legends team liked Hunter’s style to the point of wanting to recreate it in Apex Legends—we were even hoping for an eventual crossover! Nonetheless, we are afraid that, as a small indie game producer whose game hasn’t been launched yet, we’ll be called a ripoff of Apex Legends, which is certainly not true."

Their argument isn't without merit: both characters have a cybernetic eyepatch, a fake arm, sick facial hair, a necklace, gloves, low-slung holsters, a grey streak in their hair, and even a similar weakness for high-powered armaments. Additionally, the studio itself apparently has been in talks with EA, as the game Hunter originates from, BulletVille, was originally going to be published under the EA Originals label before jumping ship.

That said: while the designs themselves are unmistakably similar, it's also true that they're not terribly unique. The design elements here are all very conventional, and it's not hard to imagine two separate artists conjuring up similar images for "sci-fi rogue". And even if Fuse's design was inspired by Hunter, well, that's not really a crime: there are enough differences in them too that it's obviously not the same character.

NOWAA seems aware of this, and while they're not taking legal action off the table, right now it seems they're primiarly concerned with making sure people know Apex Legends was inspired by them, not the other way around.

Fair enough. But if you're gonna go toe to toe with friggen' EA in the court of law, you'd better have the evidence -- and the green -- to back it up.