Did Capcom Take RE5 Box Art From a Fan?

Capcom finds itself in yet another possible box art blunder with a Resident Evil 5 design that looks suspiciously familiar to a fan-made mock-up posted on the Internet this June.

This has not been a good year for the box artists at Capcom. Back in April, gamers noticed that the art for the Wii version of Okami still had the IGN watermark on it. Though Capcom corrected the mistake, it seems that it might not have learned its lesson after all: Gamezine UK reports that the art for the Resident Evil 5 box bears more than a slight resemblance to a fan-made image posted on VGBoxArt by a user called DeathSpawn11 back in June.

At first glance, the official Capcom art and DeathSpawn11’s version seem almost identical; upon closer viewing there are certainly differences between the two – the background, the lettering, the position and pose of Chris Redfield’s female sidekick – but things might not be looking so good for Capcom.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for a second. Unless DeathSpawn11 is a fantastic artist, the mock-up probably uses official Capcom art for both the characters and the logo, the main things that stand out as identical between the two versions. This could be more a case of Capcom feeling lazy and/or not particularly inspired and reusing stock art – rather than a case of blatantly stealing a fan’s creation.

Or are the similarities between the two versions just too large to handwave? What do you think?

(Via N4G)