The allegation of plagiarism of Fortnite Taro Skin aimed at Epic Games is proved to be false after all.
Reports of the accusation of plagiarism against the game developer broke online when most recently, Ruby Ramirez posted on social media a side by side image of Fortnite character, Taro.
In the post, the artist claimed that Epic Games plagiarized the character's skin from an existing design.
Alleged Plagiarism Vs. 'Fortnite' Creator False
The purported existing design was said to be uploaded to DeviantArt more than two months ago. The resemblance between the two is "striking," from the horned mask, the belt, the hair, the shoulder pads, as well as the overall color scheme, according to Forbes.
However, it looks like the artist faked the whole thing. On Twitter, DeviantArt user Pyro-Zombie and DingDongVG both have proved the allegation of plagiarism against the game developer of Fortnite to be false.
The two revealed that they dug a different image from the original post to Deviant Art using the Google cache. They discovered that it was replaced just lately with a new one that looks like Tora skin, as shown in the tweet below:
Moreover, the artist who accused the creator of Fortnite has already removed the art pieces. The Facebook page must have already been taken down as it no longer exists at this time.
"What a very strange thing to do. Good for Epic to take it seriously and for the community to do some digging," wrote Erik Kain, Forbes' senior contributor, as he updated his article. "And shame on this person for faking this whole thing."
Epic Games Takes It Seriously
Shortly after the reports of the alleged plagiarism had spread online, Forbes did reach out to Epic Games for a comment on the accusation of plagiarism.
"We take these claims seriously and we are in the process of investigating them," the studio responded.
Taro is a new skin that was made available for Fortnite players via the Epic Games store on Nov. 14.