Paladins boss speaks out over Overwatch clone claims
Let's try that again.
Earlier this week, Hi-Rez Studios released a new gameplay trailer for Paladins that many thought looked similar to Overwatch.
One person who didn't agree, however, was Todd Harris, Hi-Rez co-founder. In fact, he disagreed so vehemently he took to Reddit to defend his company's game.
In a long post titled "A Brief History of Paladins - as response to 'copy/clone' allegations", Harris laid out how the game entered pre-production years ago and how Hi-Rez were well aware of its similarities to Overwatch after Blizzard's game was subsequently announced.
Harris explains how ideas that happened to be different to those in Overwatch "(different TTK, different style maps and game modes, different theme etc.)" were not as popular in game testing, so the studio pushed ahead regardless of whether "people would think it's too close to Overwatch".
Some Overwatch design choices appeared in Hi-Rez's own Paladins predecessor Global Agenda first, Harris argues, such as a Payload mode. Other ideas were inspired by Overwatch and Paladins' shared ancestor - Valve's hugely popular Team Fortress 2.
Harris isn't above pointing out where Overwatch is still more advanced than Paladins (100 abilities compared to Paladins' 85, for example) or where the similarities are obvious: ("about 42 abilities are very similar between Overwatch and Paladins, 36 of these abilities were previously in Global Agenda or Tribes Ascend, six abilities were seen in Overwatch before Paladins").
Harris' post also contains more than a dozen links to footage designed to prove his points.
However, Overwatch fans have argued that, whatever the actual difference between the two games, the latest Paladins trailer itself clearly positions the game as an Overwatch-esque title, and a Steam-based version of it.