Sci-fi shooter Orion pulled from Steam over allegedly stolen Call of Duty weapons assets

Activision claims that Trek Industries’ shooter Orion has been using assets from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Advanced Warfare.

The weapon art in question includes the M8A7 rifle, the Haymaker rifle, and the Bal-27 rifle," stated Activision’s request.

As a consequence, Orion has been removed from Steam for 10 days, without prior notice, Trek Industries CEO David Prassel said in a Steam post: 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.”

He later added in a long updatethat he"never was provided specific examples of assets, or screenshots of what offended them."

This happens in the middle of Steam’s sales, causing monumental damages to both revenue and brand to Trek Industries,” the studio also told Polygon.

The problem is that a Reddit user compared weapons from Orion and Black Ops 3, and they indeed look quite similar.

But Prassel said that Activision’s claim is erroneous” and provided different assets comparing weapons from Black Ops 3 and Orion:

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,” Prassel added.

He continued: They are a 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.”

But it’s actually not the first time Prassel is involved in that kind of issues, as he was already accused of stolen assets with its title Orion: Dino Beatdow. The CEO also weirdly launched an Indiegogo campaign today, possibly trying to take benefit from the whole situation.

Activision has not commented on the matter.