The drama continues. On Twitter, Battlestate Games’ Nikita Buyanov recently shared an image that seems to be more evidence of a case of plagiarism. In the last week or so, there have been rampant claims that Arena Breakout: Infinite has plagiarised Escape from Tarkov in several ways, but the most recent evidence suggests that bespoke assets created by Battlestate Games have been ‘lifted and shifted’ from Tarkov and planted in Arena Breakout: Infinite.
This claim follows posts by Buyanov suggesting that ‘unknown information’ was found in Arena Breakout: Infinite’s code referencing Escape from Tarkov bosses – information that never made it to light as Tarkov was developed.
Knife Edge Debate
There is no doubt that Arena Breakout: Infinite smacks of Escape from Tarkov in some ways. In many other ways, it’s a better title that seems to be more stable and much more entertaining, which many are claiming is why Battlestate Games has gone on the offensive against the Tencent-backed extraction shooter.
In the last few weeks, Battlestate Games has been writhing under the weight of controversies surrounding The Unheard Edition, a brand-new edition of Escape from Tarkov with a high price tag that caused a scandalous response from the community when it was revealed.
Recently, Buyanov posted a cryptic message on Twitter that showed two renders of an AK dust cover, a weapon part that’s almost instantly recognisable among fans of the first-person shooter genre of games. These two renders, complete with polygonal maps, were shown side by side with the caption, ‘It’s a Match!’
In the comments, someone asked if the asset was ‘BSG designed’, to which Buyanov wrote, ‘it’s ours, we do every single weapon in EFT and we have all of the necessary source files for that.’ That’s a direct indicator that, if the post is accurate, it’s evidence of plagiarism between these two games.
Of course, the community hasn’t been sympathetic to Buyanov’s plight, given the recent sentiment around Escape from Tarkov.
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Womp womp…no one cares! Corrupt russian dev vs corrupt Chinese dev. Have fun guys. Can’t wait yo play AB:I
Too bad Tarkov historically openly used Megascans for a lot of their assets, and they likely got this asset through Megascans before they switched to in house. Nikita is just dumb enough to miss that
this isn’t a megascan, photogrammetry mesh and material captures aren’t good for hard surface modeling, they work best or rough or organic shapes. the geometry is too clean and consistent. that said, UV coordinates being the same would be a sure fire proof this was lifted. right now, it’s just more than likely it was IF nikita is correct. megascans are primarily environmental assets, chunks of stone, chipped concrete barriers with rough wear, etc.
The devs aren’t even chinese, it’s in Argentina and Singapore. Don’t be smooth brain.
I’d be more convinced if the UV coordinates were identical too. otherwise it’s entirely possible l, just extremely unlikely that two seperate 3d artists modeled those dust covers. there’s general best practices in terms of mesh complexity and edge orientation for objects in games, while it’s a longshot that two meshes would be this similar, with every vert and edge angle lining up, it’s not impossible. this is a model of a real object.