Art theft is, sadly, very commonplace online. However, what appeared to be a case of someone's work being stolen actually turned out to be an honest mistake - because it was so good that it looked official. The developers of Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis have apologized to the creator of a piece of Danny Phantom artwork after it was mistakenly used in the game. The devs say they will replace the art with an original piece in a patch, explaining that the artist's work came up when they were looking for references from the original show. Upon initially spotting their work in the game, artist Mayuko took to Twitter to call it out. "Thank you Nick Extreme Tennis for blatantly ripping off my DP fanart and using it as an in-game emote", wrote Mayuko. "I’ve been trying to break into the animation industry for years (including Nick). I would have love to have been hired rather than have my work stolen."The tweet reached 52,000 likes, which thankfully caught the attention of the game's developers, Old Skull Games.
"We would like to publicly apologize to [Mayuko]", the company responded on Twitter. "The drawing was so good that one of our artists genuinely thought it was part of the cartoon and that it could be used as a reference. We will replace the emote in the upcoming patch."
Mayuko thanked the team for the reply, accepting that it was a mistake on their part as opposed to deliberate theft.
Nickelodeon appears to be paying more attention to its gaming scene recently, with two titles released in the past few months. Right before Extreme Tennis launched, we got Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, which is still receiving updates. The most recent addition to the fighter was Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.