British esports artist and designer Wayne ‘DeadBird’ Peacock (aka ‘iamdeadbird’) has rejoined US esports organisation DarkZero in a controversial move.
DeadBird was let go from DarkZero this time last year following accusations of tracing other artists’ work (see this Twitter thread here), before allegedly deleting his Instagram at the time.
DarkZero’s chairman of the board, Zachary Matula aka Zach, said at the time: “I want you guys to know we take this very seriously and I 100% believe that any time art is used the original artist needs to be compensated and credited. This should never had happened to begin with.
“Also, on a personal note, art is very important to us as an org and for me personally. I think that’s part of the reason why you see so much art coming out of the org. And see this initiative as a way to support community artists. We have a long history of working with community artists to provide something cool for you guys to use. We will make sure anything [to be] made right, we will make right, you can be sure of that.”
A few weeks later, DarkZero said they had mutually parted ways with DeadBird, and that they had ‘privately connected and reached resolutions with the artists affected’.
“DarkZero will continue to be a champion for artists, players, and our strong community of loyal fans,” the org, known for competing in Rainbow Six Siege, added.
Now DeadBird has returned, and while many welcomed him back, some members of the community were not happy.
Streamer BikiniBodhi said: “What a way to spit in the face of the Siege artist community, so many amazing people who work their asses off and don’t get anything in return.
“People do deserve a second chance but more people deserve their first. Also, you definitely do not deserve a second chance, if you to this day still deny what you did despite obvious evidence.”
Another artist known as Shaun/notamutemain, spoke about feeling disillusioned about working in the space given the situation.
There were many other comments and quote tweets on the above tweet, both positive and negative, as the scene reacted to the news.
Esports News UK was under the impression DeadBird was going to provide a new statement on the situation, but we were later sent his same statement from last year, hence the delay to this article.
After parting ways from DarkZero last year, he said in a statement he’d “like to apologise for not adequately researching reference and source material”, which led to him “recreating and referencing community artwork”.
He also apologised to the creators of the original artwork, but explicitly stated that he had “never stolen artwork”, and this is the part of his initial response that seems to have irked some members of the community.
You can see that full statement below:
DeadBird also works as a designer for the British Esports Federation and UK esports organisation Resolve, whom he joined recently, and DarkBird was also invited to join the Ubisoft Star Player Program a few weeks ago.
DeadBird has also worked with Mouseskins, with some of his designs used on some of their skins.
DarkZero recently won the Apex Legends Global Series Year 2 Championships, which saw many players miss out due to visa issues and positive covid tests.
Over the past 24 hours, the news has also broken that DarkZero are leaving Valorant esports behind.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
