Wizards of the Coast has fired a freelance artist after discovering complaints that he had plagiarized fan artwork while creating a new letter to Magic: The Gathering.
In the image in question it can be found in the new Quid del Destino print, available as part of the new Strixhaven set. The card shows the image of two dragons (Nicol Bolas and Ugin, the Spirit dragon) fighting. Nicol Bolas’s image is almost identical to an illustration created by Kitt Lapeña, which was uploaded to DeviantArt in 2016.
Lapeña, who uses the online name Scarypet uploaded a video to Twitter which perfectly demonstrates plagiarism. And although they are not identical, as we rotate the limbs we will see that the silhouette and even several very fine details are identical.
In response to this, Wizards has released the following statement:
“It has come to our notice that Strixhaven’s Crux of Fate: Archive of the School of Mystic Wizards contains an image of a fan art that has been used by the cartoonist without permission for incorporation. These actions do not reflect the values of Wizards and, as a result, we are suspending Jason Felix’s work until we clarify whether or not this is true..”
If you are not players, you can try the game through its digital variant: Arena, available on PC and Mac and which has just arrived on iOS and Android. So you can try without even paying, because depending on what you buy, they have some prices or others.
