A new Fortnite spray looks eerily similar to one in Overwatch 2 – plagiarism? Or an incoming crossover?
Are there nefarious practices at work or can we be excited for a collaboration?
John Hansen 
Image via Blizzard Entertainment
Players are side-eyeing a situation in Fortnite that could lead to a range of very peculiar outcomes. After adding the Hamster Cabbie spray to Fortnite, it was noticed by Overwatch Cavalry on Twitter that this is eerily similar to Wrecking Ball’s Pilot spray in Overwatch 2. The below tweet places the latter over the former, and you can see just how close the resemblance is.
The big question at play here is, did Epic Games plagiarize Blizzard’s spray in this case? If they didn’t, could there be a potential crossover incoming between the two games? The outcomes on both sides are so different that it is a bit hard to comprehend.
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On the one hand, if an employee at Epic did trace over Overwatch’s spray, Fortnite is likely to be further investigated by players to see what other potential cases of plagiarism it has in it. We’ve seen this story before with questions of how Fortnite’s dances are directly taken from other sources and the previous Among Us “inspired” Impostors mode. Conversely, a cross-game collaboration between these two titles would be cool.
Fortnite, of course, is probably best known for how many crossovers it houses. From Marvel heroes to the NFL, there are so many popular franchises represented in this battle royale. Adding skins for Overwatch’s popular heroes would work perfectly for them. On Overwatch 2’s side, putting in dance emotes, sprays, and other content that directly ties to Fortnite could be interesting as well. A partnership there could work both ways, especially with Overwatch 2 set to get its first collaboration with One Punch Man next month.
From the way we see things, though, this looks like a case of an Epic employee copying Blizzard’s work a little too closely. The hamster spray in Fortnite looks too spot-on to the Wrecking Ball one in Overwatch 2, with just small changes like hairstyle and fur color. We also can’t imagine the hamster in a ball mech being one of the first choices to be represented in Fortnite if they were to crossover, though we do think a collaboration between the two would be great.
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