An NFT Project called “Oldeus has been accused of plagiarism where they seemingly ripped off animations from animated cutscenes from the popular mobile gacha game, “Arknights.” The publisher of “Arknights” Hypergryph has sent out a cease and desist order against the “Oldeus” team.

“Oldeus” is a web3 brand of NFTs with characters and tokens inspired by anime and manga that users can buy. One of the most recent tweets from the “Oldeus” Twitter account contained the accusation. Characters from the NFT project are featured in a brief animation that lasts 21 seconds in the teaser. Users were quick to point out the startling parallels between the clip and the animation scenario from “Arknights’” animated cutscene titled “Roaring Flare,” in which the character, Amiya transforms into a Guard class operator. You can check out the side-by-side images down below.

Additionally, it appears that several individuals on the “Oldeus” Discord server are asserting that the similarities between the reveal trailer and the Arknights sequence are the result of it being allegedly created by the same animation company.

Regarding this claim, the “Oldeus” Twitter account created a thread in which they stated that their goal was not to “copy” the “Arknights” trailer verbatim but rather to use it as “inspiration” for their own work. They also posted some WIP files in the same thread to demonstrate that the trailer was created from scratch.

Hypergryph views this instance of plagiarism as a “severe infringement” of the publisher’s copyright and other rights in the post that was made publicly available. There were even further allegations made questioning the truth.

Additionally, contrary to what the “Oldeus” team said, the team states that it has had “no interaction” with them. They point out that “Oldeus’s” claims to have contact with the “Arknights” teams were apparent frauds and that the business has never formed a partnership. They are now giving Oldeus 48 hours to take down all the copyrighted content.