Microsoft is under scrutiny right now for allegedly plagiarizing an idea for an Xbox One advertisement (ad) from "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" (PUBG).
In a tweet, which has since been deleted by the company, an image is shown where the terrain and the player character of "PUBG" exist on top of the wide surface of the Xbox One console with an overhead of an atmospheric sky. This was one of the marketing attempts of Mircosoft after "PUBG" has been released on their console.
Apparently, this sort of art has already been done by a Redditor, who goes by the name Macsterr, more than a month ago before the game was released on the console. The said ad concept was even posted by Macterr on his own thread in the forums where he was lauded for doing a fantastic job with photo manipulation by a lot of users.
What's worse is that Microsoft, despite copying his concept for the ad did not credit him. Granted, the company did change some of the designs and assets, but this did not prevent a lot of people from calling them out and pointing out the stolen idea. It is worth noting that Macsterr also used assets of two other companies in the process of pitching his own ad concept to the internet, but apparently, he had no means of monetizing this.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has used it for its official ad, which angered a lot of Reddit users and other people as well. While Macsterr did not have any legal right or basis to defend his work or idea, a lot of people thought that it was incredibly rude of the big company not to acknowledge him. Macsterr has claimed, "I'm not saying I own any copyright, but the original post has 63,000 views so I assume they saw it and I got no credits."
Microsoft has so far not commented on the allegations, but Lawrence Hryb, the company's Director of Programming, has assured people that they have deleted the post while it is still under investigation and will be transparent with Macsterr once the results have been found out.
