Spiral Game Studios and Trek Industries were happy to offer their game ORION at a discount during the Steam summer sale.
Unfortunately, that game has been taken down from Steam, due to an alleged DMCA takedown notice from Activision. ORION developer David James posted the DMCA complaint he received on an announcement bulletin:
“on behalf of Activision, who alleges that the game Orion uses weapon art content from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The weapon art in question includes the M8A7 rifle, the Haymaker rifle, and the Bal-27 rifle.”
James posted comparison pictures of the weapons in question, to allow the public to see what the DMCA was referring to.
The severity of the situation is amplified given the timing of the takedown. Steam’s annual Summer Sale is critical time for game developers to increase awareness of their product. To have a controversy take place during the event has an impact on overall game sales.
The post itself states that there was no “proper verification” during this process, nor could the developer themselves confirm the representative from Activision was a real person. But the results speak for themselves. The game is gone from the Steam store at the time of writing. We’ll update with further details as they’re made available.
Several of you readers have pointed out new images that show strong similarities between Orion’s guns and those in Black Ops 3. The image shows how a gun in Orion may have been cobbled together based on multiple guns from Activision’s shooter. Check it out below and see it for yourself. Click the image below to enlarge it: