Ford uses copyrighted Firewatch art in ad campaign

UPDATE 28/06/2016 4.56pm Firewatch developer Campo Santo has offered the following pisstake on Ford stealing the game's art for its ad campaign. It also points out that Firewatch is 33 per cent off on Steam until 4th July. Nice!

ORIGINAL STORY 27/06/2016 10.14pm A Ford dealership in Quincy, Massachusetts has used copyrighted art assets from Firewatch in an email campaign.

Firewatch publisher Panic, Inc. posted the ad on Twitter with the caption "Ahh, remember when Henry and Delilah were excited about the Ford Freedom Sales Event? #ripoffexpress @camposanto"

Developer Campo Santo co-founder Sean Vanaman added "Come on down to the Quirk Ford Freedom Sales event where ur free from such things as 'copyright' and 'infringement!'

The auto group's advertising department staffer Sean Western told Game Informer "We always use DMCA compliant sites when getting images," and cited WideWallpaper.info as the source of the image. What Western failed to realise is that while people can submit DMCA takedowns on WideWallpaper.info, there's no guarantee that every image on there isn't stolen.

Vanaman, however, clarified to GameInformer's Mike Futter that Western's alibi doesn't hold up. "That 'Update' is bs as their mailer actually includes elements from our old website that aren't available on any wallpaper site," he said on Twitter.

"We live in a time of infinite free content so it's really no wonder everyone thinks everything is free on the internet," he added.

He is right, though. Even companies as esteemed as Naughty Dog make have made this mistake. Repeatedly.

Panic, Inc. had a sense of humour about the whole episode, as it issued the following response:

We've requested further comment about this from Quirk Ford and will update should the company shed further light on the matter.

Outside of this ugly incident, Ford was just getting in the good graces of gamers after recruiting David Hayter for some Metal Gear Solid-themed Ford commercials.