Paladins RIPPED OFF Overwatch? Developer Responds

That sucks for Hi-Res for all the flac.

"We stole from this MOBA shooter, this MOBA shooter, and this MOBA shooter, but we didn't steal from the MOBA shooter we stole from that noticed."

Basically "I shot the sheriff but I didn't shoot no deputy." ...Except more like "I killed 7 cops and the deputy but I only seriously maimed the sheriff and it's not my fault he died from his injuries."

It honestly doesn't matter imo. Play the games you like and forget about it.

I dislike the spin that comes from this story. Yes, Paladins is similar to Overwatch in gameplay and feel. They aren't really hiding that fact. The developer's response comes from an outcry and by certain communities that "x came before y, and therefore y is a cheap copy cat." The post on reddit is just trying to put perspective to it. What people don't realize is that it's not like Overwatch is 100% new and genuine.  Even if you look at the Blizzard's flagship title of WoW, other than specific lore and world setting, the majority of its concepts come from way before its time. Orcs and trolls weren't invented by Blizzard, but no one is going to call them out on ripping off Tolkien. You can't take a basic concept of "this character likes enemies closer, so we'll give them a pulling ability" and say that it's all because off Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. Even the Vanilla gameplay was, in a lot of ways, iterative concepts of the MMOs that came out before it; WoW may have put MMOs on the map, but they sure as hell weren't the first. 

Though I do appreciate that the story brings about some cogent points that I can get behind. Some game developers just come about certain ideas because, hey look at that, it's popular in this one instance and it totally works. Now the best way to capitilize on it is to put that idea into EVERYTHING. And thus you get a flood of the same stuff, saturating the game market. I literally can't even entertain the idea of a zombie game any more, because we had 4 years of games that were ONLY about zombies. (I'll leave Konami out of this one for now)

In my opinion, Hi-Rez hit the nail on the head: game design is an iterative process, and every single company is trying to make something that is fun and makes the company money. Regardless of who came first, or the he-said-she-said, Overwatch never had a high amount of appeal to me. I certainly liked the characters, but being somewhat familiar with the Blizzard community as a whole, I didn't have a major desire to re-enter it; I've been there enough already with WoW, Starcraft 1/2 and Heroes of the Storm. Paladins comes out as open beta, it's designed as a F2P game, and I found I was having fun. So now I have a founder's pack, and I want to be part of the community that provides feedback and helps shape the course of the game.

In retrospect, if I had decided to buy Overwatch, I'd probably love it as much as I love Paladins now. But at the moment I'm playing Paladins and I enjoy it. Even if the majority of people I know are playing Overwatch, I like what Hi-Rez has given me, and I don't intend to tell all of those people "hey, play Paladins instead." 

In the end all it should come down to is "do I want to play this game." If the answer is yes, play it and enjoy. If the answer is no, move along to something that you do enjoy, and I'll be happy for you!  

kinda sucks because hi rez actually makes decent mobas. maybe if they had pushed the games launch to a little later (when overwatchs popularity died out a bit maybe) and used that time to add more to the game to further differentiate them the hate wouldnt be so prominent. such a shame but i can only hope this blows over

People new to Blizzard games should know that Blizzard has few "original" titles. ALL of their games borrow from other aspects of existing games. What makes Blizzard games Blizzard games is how they combine, weed out and craft all of those elements into their games. WoW is easily the largest and most play MMO but holds neither the title of first MMO nor most Innovated MMO. Heck, even with their newest Legion expansion they changed a lot of how the game plays (again) by streamlining a lot of the skills and making characters more customizible. (aspects borrowed from more modern MMOs), but in true Blizzard fashion, still makes it feel like the WoW from years past. Overwatch is no different. It borrows from TF2, MOBAs and the FPS genre. In fact, its so borrowed from other genres that Blizzard didn't know how to even make the game at first. They needed Infinity Ward to come help them.

Now don't take that as a put down cause if you know Blizzard, that's just how Blizzard is and everyone knows it. But everyone knows is that if Blizzard makes it, it will most likely be a REAL FUN/GOOD game. They know how to keep people interested and invested in their games. Its why WoW is still around and continues to evolve. Honestly I hate WoW and the people who play it cause they tend to be elite jerks more so then the LoL community (just less venom) but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the actual gameplay when I did play. Same for Hearthstone, Heroes of the storm and Overwatch. All really really even incredibly fun games that you'll love to play over and over again if that's the genre of game you enjoy. But Blizzards fans know that when you start to compare you'll definitely see the flaws from their beloved producers. But that's true for any company really. But that's definitely Blizzard as a whole. That argument of "oh that's cool in that game I wonder if we can use something similar in ours" is Blizzard as a whole.

Sucks for Hi-Rez being such a small company having to go up against someone as successful as Blizzard in the hero team shooter genre. 2K isn't as small of a studio (I think) but even they couldn't compete with Overwatch.

With that said when I first played Paladins back when it was still a closed alpha, it did not remind me of Overwatch at all. The gameplay even then didn't feel like overwatch, and the first few characters they released (aside from Fernando) didn't bear any major similarities to OW characters as far as I remember. I don't see why this is such a debate, as you guys covered towards the end of the video it's not uncommon for developers to borrow elements from other devs or games that seem popular. In fact i would argue that blizzard is really well known for not only borrowing elements from other games but just getting them to mesh in a really fun experience. As TG23 mentioned, Blizzard isnt even known for having their own original titles as much as they are for making these borrowed aspects an incredibly enjoyable experience, which you could argue they did with overwatch if you're a fan of the game. 

Personally I really wish Hi-Rez would have scrapped Paladins and focused on Smite. It's still a young game and I think they should solidify their place with the 3rd person MOBA before moving onto other ventures. As a 3rd person moba, smite offers a different experience than LoL or DOTA, without having to worry to much about being written off as just another clone of a more successful game or company.

This may be beating a dead horse, but aren't most games of the same genre taking from other games, at least in one shape or form. These days, there aren't many games that are 100% original.

yeah just based on all the stuff the dev posted and said it really does seem like they just got screwed by timing. But I feel like even if Hi Res did release first, Overwatch would probably still be more popular just because of the fact they are Blizzard.

As someone who plays both paladins and overwatch. this hurts me.

coincidental? probably. but the similarities between the characters in OW and Paladins is really really hard to ignore. Granted, people tend to think along the same lines, especially when working in a similar creative environment (such as game studios and animation companies), so this could just be a really shitty case of several minds thinking alike at the same time. 

Or it's a blatant ripoff. Either way!

So overwatch has a big company backing and came out first. seems like palidans got screwed with timing thats all