Indie studio alleges Apex Legends’ Fuse “rips off” its character

NOWWA says that Fuse "looks weirdly similar" to BulletVille's Hunter.

BulletVille developer NOWWA has said that Apex Legends’ Fuse “looks weirdly similar” to its main character Hunter, going as far to allege that “Apex Legends rips off character from small indie studio,” in a press release.

In the release, NOWWA compares Fuse (above, right) to Hunter (above, left) and says that both characters sport a rocket launcher, an eyepatch, biker attire, a skull belt, a mechanical arm, a grey/red colour scheme, a “characteristic grey stripe of hair” and more.

“Could it be that NOWWA took inspiration from Apex Legends‘ Fuse to design Hunter instead? NOWWA’s Hunter has been public for nearly two years, yet this is the first reveal of Fuse who seems to share a lot of similarities with Hunter,” the press release states. “It seems highly unlikely that NOWWA would have had this information nearly two years ago.”

NOWWA also stated that it “declared to have had BulletVille playtests with the EA team back in October and November 2020, which reinforces the theory of a potential ‘inspiration’.”

“We are happy that the Apex Legends team liked Hunter’s style to the point of wanting to recreate it in Apex Legends – we were even hoping for an eventual crossover,” a NOWWA representative said. “Nonetheless, we are afraid that, as a small indie game producer whose game hasn’t been launched yet, we’ll be called a ripoff of Apex Legends, which is certainly not true.”

We’ve gone to EA and Respawn for comment.

Apex Legends will add Fuse in early February on Windows PC, Xbox and PlayStation consoles. BulletVille is planned for release on Windows PC, Mac, PS5, Xbox Series S & X, Switch, iOS and Android devices; you can check out some Hunter gameplay below.