Paladins Is Not an Overwatch Clone, Dev Says

[UPDATE] Hi-Rez boss Todd Harris wrote a lengthy post on Reddit today in which he provides a detailed timeline of Paladins' development. Read it here.

The original story is below.

The developer behind Paladins has responded to claims that the game borrows heavily from Blizzard's hero shooter Overwatch. Hi-Rez COO Todd Harris told IGN that Overwatch "was not the inspiration for Paladins."

To back up his point, he added that characters in the game who bear a resemblance to those from Overwatch "were available and playable in the Paladins beta long before similar character abilities were shown in Overwatch."

You can read Harris' full statement at the bottom of this post. The statement comes after this video gained traction online (it has more than 1.6 million views), showing off the supposed similarities between Paladins and Overwatch. As IGN points out, the closed beta for Paladins started in November 2015, while Overwatch's closed beta period began in October 2015.

Paladins is available now on Steam for free through Early Access. By comparison, Overwatch is a paid game. Blizzard has not released a statement on the comparisons between Overwatch and Paladins.

According to Harris, fans can expect even more of an explanation tomorrow.

Hi-Rez also made Smite, an update for which released today added a new co-op mode and more on PS4 and Xbox One.

Todd Harris Statement:

"While Overwatch is a fine game, it was not the inspiration for Paladins. Game development is an interactive process with ideas coming from many past projects. For the hero shooter genre, the game that deserves the most credit is Team Fortress 2. We released a TF2 inspired class-based shooter called Global Agenda way back in 2010. Paladins was conceived as a fantasy version of Global Agenda and of the approximately 85 combat abilities currently in Paladins, the vast majority are from the game Global Agenda we made 10 years ago.

Given the marketing of Overwatch many people do not even realize that some of our champions, like the mini-gun mech (Ruckus) and the ice block character (Evie), were available and playable in the Paladins Beta long before similar character abilities were shown in Overwatch. And specific features, such as Chests, were also demonstrated in Paladins ahead of Overwatch. People who are interested can see all this early gameplay footage on YouTube and come to their own conclusions."