When you’re making a pirate-themed piece of entertainment, whether it be a TV show or a video game or a bottle of rum, there’s probably going to be pirate ships involved in the design. However, one Ubisoft employee claims Netflix straight-up stole an image from Skull & Bones.
Julian Kok, the art director at Ubisoft Singapore, took to Twitter to accuse Netflix of stealing the cover art for the game to use in promotional art for the show The Lost Pirate Kingdom.
When shown side-by-side like that it’s pretty obvious that if it’s not the same image, it’s incredibly similar at the very least but still, people were not happy about it.
“What’s going on with Netflix stealing art from artist like it was nothing???? The worst it’s that almost anyone notices it…,” one person said. “Netflix has been doing this a lot….yikes,” another said.
People on the internet being the natural sleuths that they are, someone figured out the artwork was actually available for purchase on the image licensing site Shutterstock.
Unfortunately this was also a surprise to Kok.
To be fair, this didn’t just happen. A thread on r/SkullAndBonesGame pointed out the similarities a year ago and also found the corresponding stock image. Some also took the time to trash the show, like this user:
Skull & Bones is an open world pirate game first announced in 2013. It’s been mired in development hell the past ten years and has now been delayed until March 2023. We’ll keep you posted for if/when Netflix responds.
