Home Gaming Hi-Rez respond to claims that Paladins copied Overwatch

Hi-Rez respond to claims that Paladins copied Overwatch

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Paladins Overwatch

Hi-Rez Studios, the team that brought you third-person MOBA Smite, took their latest project, Paladins, to open beta on Steam last week . Here’s what it’s about, in case you’ve never heard about it before:

Enter a fantasy world of ancient technology in Paladins, a team-based shooter with strategy elements and deep character customization. Through a unique collectible card system, players can amplify and augment a character’s core set of abilities to play exactly how they want to play.

You may have watched that trailer and thought, “hmmm, some of that sure does resemble another popular team-based shooter on the market”. I know I sure did. Just look at the header image above for example, and tell me that Paladin’s Barik and Fernando don’t immediately remind you of Overwatch’s Torbjörn and Reinhardt.

The idea of the game copying seems to be a general consensus, because since Paladins hit open beta, many have thrown criticism at it, claiming that it has ripped some of its ideas directly from Blizzard’s own team-based shooter. Hi-Rez have since come out and said the following in response (via IGN):

“While Overwatch is a fine game, it was not the inspiration for Paladins. Game development is an interactive process with ideas coming from many past projects. For the hero shooter genre, the game that deserves the most credit is Team Fortress 2. We released a TF2 inspired class-based shooter called Global Agenda way back in 2010. Paladins was conceived as a fantasy version of Global Agenda and of the approximately 85 combat abilities currently in Paladins, the vast majority are from the game Global Agenda we made 10 years ago.

Given the marketing of Overwatch many people do not even realize that some of our champions, like the mini-gun mech (Ruckus) and the ice block character (Evie), were available and playable in the Paladins Beta long before similar character abilities were shown in Overwatch. And specific features, such as Chests, were also demonstrated in Paladins ahead of Overwatch. People who are interested can see all this early gameplay footage on YouTube and come to their own conclusions.”

I can hardly fault that to be honest. It’s true that many games today have taken an idea (or ideas) from elsewhere, and bent it into their own flavour. Just look at the MOBA genre. League of Legends and Dota 2 for example have many characters who at the very least look similar to each other. That, and the primary objective of each is to push down a lane and destroy the enemy team’s main structure.

Paladins PEWPEWPEWPEW

Overwatch isn’t exactly the most unique game if you step back and remove all the charm and quality that Blizzard have poured into it. They certainly borrowed ideas from countless other shooters themselves.

But they’ve never shied away from admitting that. In just about every developer update I’ve watched, or every statement I’ve read, the Overwatch development team have said that they’re huge fans of shooters. They’ve no doubt taken elements from each of their favourites, and poured it into their own FPS. This is apparent with Soldier: 76 for example, who is the typical Shooty McShooter persona (with built in aimbot as an ulti), or Pharah, whose primary weapon harkens back to Quake and Unreal Tournament.

Paladins pewpewpew

The problem with Paladins I think, is that nobody really knew much about it until just recently. Now that it’s out in the wild, everyone’s immediate reaction is to call Hi-Rez out on blatantly copying Overwatch.

Did it though? I genuinely did think so myself, but after having read this Reddit post giving a brief history of Paladins (shared by Hi-Rez Studios COO Todd Harris), I’m not entirely sure:

“Overwatch was announced. We were shocked and not sure what direction to take. We were already so far along with Paladins, but we didn’t want to compete directly against Blizzard.

We initially tried to find different ways to differentiate on game-play (different TTK, different style maps and game modes, different theme, etc), but the feedback from our tests, stats, and surveys showed that only a small part of our population was enjoying that style of game. In the end we said screw it and just made what we thought best, and closest to our original vision, even if people would think it’s too close to Overwatch.

We created almost all the Paladins classes and abilities using Global Agenda and Smite as our template. We used our Aurum fantasy theme from 2012 and Smite characters as placeholders (although some like Grover the tree just stayed).

As a last point, it would be almost impossible for a studio of our size to ‘clone’ Overwatch in a year, but Overwatch did have some nice features that we decided to incorporate into Paladins (Kill Cam, Improved Lag comp, some verbiage like ‘eliminations’).”

So Paladins did take a little bit of inspiration from Overwatch. The studio insists though that most of their characters, abilities, and more, existed long before Blizzard’s shooter came out.

Where do we draw the line between blatant copying and taking inspiration? I’d love to hear Blizzard’s comment on this story. Where did they get the ideas for their characters for example? How do they feel about Paladins?

I haven’t played Hi-Rez’s game yet myself, so I can’t really offer fair, objective comment. What’s your take on this whole saga?

Last Updated: September 21, 2016

25 Comments

  1. Cloning games works well – just look at COD.

    Reply

    • ??????? ????? ™

      September 21, 2016 at 13:45

      Hehehehehe

      Reply

    • Pariah ???

      September 21, 2016 at 15:24

      That’s not cloning. That’s Mitosis.

      Reply

  2. Alien Emperor Trevor

    September 21, 2016 at 13:38

    But if I could be serious for a minute, I remember seeing the Paladin beta announcement well before Blizzard fanboys fapped Overwatch all over my monitor.

    Reply

    • ??????? ????? ™

      September 21, 2016 at 13:47

      Sad but true

      Reply

    • BOI

      December 7, 2016 at 02:56

      Overwatch porn is gud ok m8
      Imagine having a giant troll fucking female ripoff hanzo

      Reply

  3. Original Heretic

    September 21, 2016 at 13:45

    Man, that rather sucks quite significantly for Hi-Rez. They can defend themselves as much as they want, bring out evidence supporting all they’re saying, but because their game is coming out after Overwatch, they’re going to take flak for it being “an imitation”.

    Reply

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      September 21, 2016 at 13:51

      Meanwhile everyone’s forgotten about… um… BorderBorn… no, um… BattleWatch… no… shit.

      Reply

      • Original Heretic

        September 21, 2016 at 13:55

        Yeah, don’t get me started on that…. I bought THAT instead of Overwatch, thinking “Hey, I want my shooter to have some sort of singleplayer to it!”.
        A decision I rue to this day!

        Reply

        • Sageville

          September 21, 2016 at 14:18

          …and the sound of a thousand Overwatch players laughing in the background permeates the air….

          Reply

          • Original Heretic

            September 21, 2016 at 14:22

            I knew there was a reason I had so many Overwatch dreams last night….

        • Joe Knox

          September 23, 2016 at 06:46

          I did the same and don’t rue that day at all. I love BattleBorn and the fact that there’s a singleplayer campaign and co-op; it adds depth to the game. I bought BB and then Overwatch a month later and couldn’t refund it fast enough. Overwatch was the best refund I’ve ever made.

          Reply

  4. ??????? ????? ™

    September 21, 2016 at 13:57

  5. Sageville

    September 21, 2016 at 14:16

    ….and Overwatch copied Team Fortress 2… amirite?

    Reply

    • Joe Knox

      September 23, 2016 at 06:46

      “Payload” anyone?

      Reply

    • Haris Malik

      October 20, 2016 at 20:51

      overwatch and team fortress 2 were made by the same people, they have a right to do that

      Reply

      • HeeCiuP

        October 28, 2016 at 21:55

        No they werent. :DDD Overwatch was made by Blizzard and TF2 was made by Valve

        Reply

    • ?PX•?ightm?r?TM •

      October 29, 2016 at 23:25

      Name one way that Overwatch copied Team Fortress 2.

      Reply

      • Sageville

        October 31, 2016 at 10:54

        TF2 was the first “Hero-shooter” – hence that was copied.

        Next question.

        Reply

  6. The Order of the Banana

    September 21, 2016 at 15:05

    Or maybe Blizzard copied Hi Rez (or at least was “inspired” by them)? First out of the gates doesn’t always mean first to the gate.

    http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/010/390/pC8jf5t4eWCDKcMu.jpg

    Reply

  7. The Mosaic Dragon

    November 6, 2016 at 17:34

    I have had paladins since it came out for testing, well before i had heard of over-watch, all this confusion is due to the fact that paladins has been in beta for a long amount of time and has only recently been actually up for public download/discussion hence everyone making all the fuss.Personally they are all very similar in this genre, it may be that over-watch took ideas from paladins or vice versa but does that reallymatter?

    Reply

  8. XadowKiller

    November 10, 2016 at 20:03

    In the end, it doesnt matter who copied who. To me Overwatch manage to make this gameplay style way more fun, with better characters and etc. But, the game is expensive, so Paladins is an excelent choice for those that cant afford or dont want to pay for OW. I think that if you have the possibilty to chose between both games, i would definately recommend OW simply because its a way more developed game then Paladins.

    Reply

  9. Craig Lotter

    June 1, 2017 at 09:39

    I played some Paladins on the Xbox One last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters do seem to be ‘inspired’ from quite a lot of sources though!

    Reply

  10. not the REAL craze

    September 14, 2017 at 17:50

    what a load of shit, you dont coincidentally make the exact same characters, like mordekaiser, reaper, mei, and the bow dude , probably even more resemblances i cant be bothered playing it anymore its not like some abilities have been coincidentally made the same its entire characters, and then just change 1 ability on that character.

    Reply

    • Aaron Maxwell

      October 23, 2017 at 21:18

      PALADINS WAS IN DEVELOPMENT FIRST AND THE CHARACTERS AND DESIGNS WERE MADE PUBLIC FIRST. ALL THIS ARTICLE TELLS US IS THAT OVERWATCH BLATANTLY COPIED PALADINS, WHAT A SHAME.

      Reply

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