Last week, CS:GO got a new music kit, sticker capsule, and weapon case. At least one skin from
that new case has contained plagiarised content. The skin in question was the AWP Doodle Lore,
which looked like THIS. And it’s been swapped out for the AWP Duality, which is made by different
skin artists. But there’s more to this story than first meets the eye. And rather concerningly,
it may just be a symptom of a deeper problem within the skin workshop. And one that’s growing.
Plagiarism. Because when there’s money on the line, it gives people an incentive
to cheat in order to get the upper hand. This whole situation was brought to light
by The Danidem on twitter, who had been tipped off that something wasn’t quite right with this entry
and remarked on twitter about just how quickly the Doodle Lore’s artist’s work had improved in
just a matter of days. ‘No one could improve that much in a span of less than a month’, he says.
Danidem is no stranger to this sort of detective work. As an example, here’s another skin made by
the Doodle Lore’s ‘creator’. Check this out. Danidem used to be a moderator for
a large online art hub and used to detect many instances of stolen work back then as well. He
says at this point they’re like sudokus which he likes to attempt to beat in under 5 minutes.
In this case? With great success. As for the Doodle Lore, it turns out
it contains some artwork originally made by an artist known as VEXX,
who you might know cos he’s already got 3 million subscribers on youtube. Check him
out here and don’t forget to SMASH his subscribe button. His artwork has seen considerable success
in other fields already. And he filed a DMCA take-down request on the Doodle Lore,
and within days of this, Valve had swapped the stolen AWP skin out for another one.
This isn’t the first time this has happened- you probably already know the tale of the Howl skin.
This was in the early days of CS:GO, and when this artwork was discovered to have been stolen,
Valve swapped it with their own, very similar-looking design, and discontinued
production of the HOWL by putting it in its own special CONTRABAND category,
causing the value of any existing Howl skins to skyrocket due to new-found rarity. Understandably,
they haven’t wanted to do this since cos it would encourage bad habits, like where you deliberately
steal people’s work to make a skin, then when it’s featured in the game you hoard a bunch of them in
the hope that when the plagiarism is detected, they too become contraband and super valuable.
So that’s probably why Valve doesn’t make ‘contraband’ tiered items these days. And
since then, a few other cases have come to mind where Valve has quietly remedied stolen
skin situations behind the scenes, and without too much commotion. There was one time I remember when
I was reaching out to all the skin makers to hear their stories and one of them immediately blocked
me and disappeared off the face of the earth. At the time I remember feeling sad, thinking I had
offended him in some way. But it later turned out he had stolen his work and I guess thought I had
rumbled him and had then come to investigate. Valve swapping the plagiarised skin out for
a new one sounds like an easy solution, but it isn’t without its own problems.
For instance: what if some owners of the Doodle Lore preferred that design better,
and don’t like the new design it’s been swapped out for, which they now find in their inventory
even though they had no say in the matter? Don’t get me wrong. The Duality is an awesome skin!
But I’m talking about personal tastes here. Because real artists can give you real, valid
reasons for why you shouldn’t prefer the Doodle Lore to the Duality: they can point out that,
since it was plagiarised by someone who can’t draw, that the result is inconsistent in quality
or in style, or they can say how the new Duality skin is objectively better in these regards,
thanks to the skilled artists who worked on it. But all this won’t stop some people from
still preferring the Doodle Lore. Because art IS subjective, and some people will prefer an
objectively inferior piece, simply because they prefer it and that’s like, their opinion, man.
But obviously, yes. Plagiarised material shouldn’t remain in the game, or should at least have some
deal struck up with the original artist behind that content. I wouldn’t know about all this
as all this would go on behind the scenes. An interesting problem that could occur from
swapping skins out is the issue of float values. Float values determine how much wear the skins can
have- the Doodle Lore could range between 0 and 0.8, whereas the Duality’s only ranges between 0
and 0.7. So it means that, of the pre-existing skins that were transformed into Dualities,
there could be some with float values MORE than 0.7 which are now impossible to obtain
from new unboxings! This could mean that pre-update Dualities could become a rare
and incredibly valuable commodity for skin collectors! Though sorry to spoil your fun,
but Valve seems aware of this so don’t expect it to remain a thing for too long.
And then I guess the last concern that Valve might have is that the plagiariser,
from before the time they were caught, had access to sensitive information about the case sales,
and now they’ve been caught and have nothing to lose, what might they do with that information?...
Valve has guidelines for skin makers to follow. These are all featured in Valve’s Style Guide,
and it advises against weapon skins using large portions of solid colours, the usage of full
black, or of over-saturated skin designs, due to the unnatural way that these things interact with
CS:GO’s environments. These are not steadfast rules- merely guidelines which can be broken,
should the artist deem it beneficial for their designs to do so. A skin maker told me that
recently, Valve has been picking increasing numbers of skins which do violate these
guidelines, speculating that maybe they’ve changed the person who is picking the skins to feature in
the game. Of course, all this is speculation but I do love speculation and I suspect it drives
the skin makers when it comes to planning what they’ll make next, and in which sort of style.
But skin makers aren’t just given guidelines- for there are also rules which skin makers
MUST follow. I’ll link to this page in the description. But as an example of
what it contains… here’s one of the FAQ’s. Question: ‘I made a cool sticker or weapon
skin using a picture I found on the internet!’ Answer: ‘First, that's not a question - it's
just copyright infringement - even if you traced it, changed the colors,
or don't think anyone can tell. You don't own it and we can't ship it. It'll get removed and you
might get a workshop community ban. Just don't do this. Blah blah blah blah blah... Please
make your own art from scratch.’ The AWP wasn’t the only skin in the new case
to have its origins questioned. The M4A4 Temaku is part of a collection of skins where several
share similarities with pre-existing artwork. It’s not for me to judge, but here is the evidence that
has been put forward, showing the skins’ designs against pre-existing artwork found online. Even
the accepted M4A4 skin has come under fire, with the woman’s hair bearing a striking resemblance
to an image found online from 2016. The skin’s maker has remained adamant that his skin designs
are 100% his own original works, has provided sketches to try and prove this, and says that YES
he is sure it is simular but not 100% the same. And as of making this video, unlike the AWP,
the M4A4 remains in the collection. And the battle over what constitutes original work,
and what is deemed plagiarism, continues. There could be more instances of it happening with other
skins featured in CS:GO- and some skin makers have expressed their concerns to me that it’s sending
the wrong message for Valve to wait for DMCAs to be issued from the original artists before
taking down suspect content. It might be sending the message that plagiarism is okay- so long
as you’re not caught. Or in this case, DMCA’d by the artists who originally made the works.
VEXX, the artist behind the original artwork on the AWP,
who DID DMCA the AWP that was using his design, has now expressed his interest in becoming more
directly involved with CS:GO’s weapon skin designs. Besides, his work has already proven
itself to be good enough to get featured in the game. He might as well benefit from it.
And if you’re an artist and think that your work is being plagiarised by a skin that’s already in
CS:GO, and don’t know what you can do about it, then check out this video’s description for a
link to Valve’s DMCA page, which is where you should go to submit your own report.