Is it not possible they are two different models based on the same common real life item?
That level of matching is too close. Do we know where the l4d2 asset came from? Could be both bought them from the same asset pack.
The original asset came from Valve who made L4D2.
But all of the models from L4D2 have long since been scraped. Many of them distributed by Valve for use in Source projects and mods. Which also means that you can find almost all of the assets available for free download with missing credits.
Ofc that doesn’t make it legal to use said models in your projects. But this is not an obvious L4D prop.
So either they got this through Valves official channels, for some reason, although I find it unlikely because i feel like Activision would have a million similar props lying around in-house…
Or someone needed a background prop, and either got it through some bogus license, free no-license download or even took it off the Source engine on purpose as a placeholder. After which no one followed up on it, because it’s an easily overlooked prop, playing a fairly insignificant role, and most likely won’t get them in any significant amount of trouble anyway.
So they probably bought it from a 3rd party that didn’t have the rights to it. And yeah, I doubt that Valve would go after them for something like this, but Activism might correct it anyway depending on how much they paid for that pack.
