Epic Games Allegedly Stole Fan Art for Fortnite Skin

UPDATE: The "original" artwork has since been removed and all posts made by the artist, including the claim that Epic stole it, are gone. Which makes it seem like the whole thing was a hoax.

Original story: Fortnite may yet get its creators, Epic Games, sued proper, as they've allegedly been busier with more things than just outright denying extremely positively-reviewed games from being sold on their Store. We're getting reports that a piece of fan artwork seems to have been taken and used in Fortnite without giving due credit. The Fortnite Taro skin bears a striking resemblance to an original piece of artwork posted on DeviantArt by artist Elecast - which if true would open Epic Games up for a veritable lawsuit, unlike the string of dance moves lawsuits the company has faced recently.

Elecast originally posted the character art in question back in September, with the skin(s) eventually making their way into Fortnite come November. The timeline, then, fits, which if true could land Epic in some real hot water. However, Reddit poster Randomman96, pointed out that the artist actually made edits to this piece of artwork on DeviantArt yesterday, and we're not sure the extent of these "edits" - which makes for a rather suspicious development, all things considered. DeviantArt logs artwork modification dates, with the latest one for Elecast's artwork being 30th of March. With Fortnite's Taro and Nara skins available in-game and prominently featured in the game's promotional material before launching, the information presented above may make things less clear and one-sided than Elecast would have us believe. We'll just have to wait and see if anything develops from this case. UPDATE: Epic responds. Forbes got in touch with Epic, who had this simple comment: "We take these claims seriously and are in the process of investigating them." More as it develops.