It's not hard to see which part of Olly Moss's artwork (the Empire Strikes Back image on the right) was lifted and used in the Borderlands 2 reverse box art on the left. (Hint: look at the clouds/river.) In fact, it's pretty blatant. So when this was brought to Moss's attention, he was understandably annoyed—but mostly because he's a fan and would have loved to work with Gearbox on some art himself.
"I'm a huge Gearbox fan so I was really disappointed to see this image inside the Borderlands 2 box," he tweeted. "If they'd called I would have just made them something new."
"Not angry, just disappointed," he added in another message. "One of my favourite developers. Would have jumped at the opportunity to work with them. Oh well."
Naturally, Gearbox CEO responded to Moss's accusations…with compliments: "You're amazing. Inspiration is part of art and you've inspired us," he tweeted, followed by a promise: "But the bit that was lifted is uncool, so... consequences."
Yikes. We would not want to be the artist responsible for that piece of work right now. Pitchford followed up later with, "Check your e-mail. We should be working together to do it right and legit," and, just to reiterate, "You're awesome, Olly. I'm now really looking forward to working together!"
He even wrote, "I love you." Aww.
We're glad that took the turn it did—watching this dispute unfold in any other way would have felt too much like watching mommy and daddy throw things at one another.
[via Beefjack via reddit]
