RoosterTeeth Responds to Allegations of Plagrisim in DC Comics RWBY Comic, Will Update Art to Change Weapon Design
After Rooster Teeth was accused of plagiarizing a fan-made weapon design in the latest issue of their DC Comics published RWBY comic, the entertainment production company has acknowledged the similarities and stated that, despite the similarity between the designs being unintentional, the artwork will be changed in all future distributions of the issue.
On October 29th, Rooster Teeth’s Head of Licensing & Distribution Geoff Yetter made a community post to the Rooster Teeth website aiming to address the accusations of plagiarism:
“Hey folks – it’s your friendly neighborhood RT licensing guy here. You might better know me as “Business Dad” or “That One Guy Who Throws Tee-Shirts At You During The RTX RWBY Panel”. I hope all of you are doing well and are as hyped for the V7 premiere as we are.
I just wanted to take a second to address a hiccup in our RWBY x DC comics. As you may have heard, the most recent digital issue of the RWBY comic features Glynda wielding a super cool dust pistol. Unbeknownst to us at RT, this pistol looked very similar to a piece of fan art created by one of our FNDM, a talented guy named Chris Lee.”
Yetter states that there was no “intent” to copy Lee’s design from either Rooster Teeth or DC Comics artist Mirka Andolfo and that the company was not aware of his work until after the plagiarism issue was brought to the their attention:
“I want to set the record straight here: in no way was it anyone’s intent to copy Chris’ design and put it into the comics. We were not aware of Chris’ work, nor did we seek to use his design in the comics. Our incredible DC artist, Mirka Andolfo, is not an RT employee and creates her art outside of company walls. We review and approve every single panel of the comics, but we did not know that the weapon Mirka had drawn was similar to Chris’ fan art. So to be clear, none of us knew about any of this until it was flagged by you, our amazing fans.”
After the issue was raised to Rooster Teeth, Yetter states the company “immediately updated the art in the digital comic” and would be altering the art for the upcoming physical printings of the issue, and asserts that “this was all a simple misunderstanding, and there definitely weren’t any nefarious shenanigans going on here.”
“When this came to our attention late last week, we immediately updated the art in the digital comic to alter the look of the weapon. This alteration will also be represented in the physical version that releases in comic shops everywhere later this year.
In short, this was all a simple misunderstanding, and there definitely weren’t any nefarious shenanigans going on here. Rest assured that we’ll keep a more watchful eye on things like this in the future. Thanks to our fans for the catch. As if we needed further evidence that you’re the greatest fans that Remnant has ever known.
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Thanks as always for your continued love and support of all-things-RWBY. We wouldn’t be here without you. Here’s hoping you enjoy V7 (and the comics) as much as we do!
Best,
Geoff”
According to a screenshot provided by Reddit user /u/Lukas2702, the updated artwork replaces Lee’s ‘Dust Trivolver’ design with a more generic revolver design, most notably removing the blades from the cylinder of the firearm:
What do you make of Rooster Teeth’s statement and the newly designed firearm?
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