this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Good. I hope that sleaze Pitchford loses a mountainload of money on this. I absolutely hate the guy, he's a liar and a thief. And arguably, depending how you look at it, a pedophile.
As a short reminder: Borderlands was originally meant to look like this. Then, at the MTV Asia Awards 2006, an artist by the name of Ben Hibon premiered a neat-looking animated short by the name of Codehunters. You can see it here. Witchford saw this and wanted to use the artstlye for his new game. He and Ben had a back-and-forth for a while and then, radio silence.
2009 comes around and Pitchfork's new game Borderlands is released. And to say that it looked familiar to Codehunters would be an understatement. Kitschford, being an upstanding and virtuous citizen that he is, straight-up aped Codehunter's style. No discussions or agreements were made with Ben and as such, despite Borderlands becoming hugely profitable, Ben didn't see a cent. And that is why I will always hope for the Borderlands IP to crash and burn. Or, at the very least, for someone to actually pay Ben Hibon for (unknowingly) creating the game's artstyle. Anyway, rant over, thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I agree that Pitchford is a dick, but I sincerely disagree about the art style comments: I don't think it's morally correct to "copyright" (or, reworded: claim exclusivity of) art styles, especially in this context.
I think the two works are completely independent, and Gearbox being inspired by the short film is completely appropriate.
Anything else would be no different (in my opinion) than cases like Roger Dean (the cover artist for Yes' early albums) suing James Cameron for the floating islands in Avatar.
It's not stealing to be inspired by someone else.
I remember just a couple months ago before that game Mouse (the one that's all black and white, rubberhose animation style, where you play as a detective mouse) was supposed to come out, and everyone and their mother was freaking out over the use of the rubberhose style, as if Disney had a copyright on the entire art style itself.
I just thought people were fucking stupid for voicing those thoughts in the first place.