Still More Magic: The Gathering Plagiarism

Wizards of the Coast (WotC) did it again.

The company, which is best known for the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) as well as the trading card game Magic: The Gathering (MTG), has once again been accused of plagiarism in its artwork.

Over the past five years (and one month), the company has been embroiled in at least 5 different plagiarism accusations. That says nothing about the January 2023 license changes to D&D, which were widely criticized by fans of the game.

However, even in this colorful history, this latest accusation stands out. That’s because not only does the plagiarism involve an earlier work published by the company, but it also involves the same card, released as part of a previous collection.

If there ever were a time that WotC should have caught an act of plagiarism, this is it. While the in-house nature of the copying prevents this from becoming a copyright issue, it is still a major black eye for the company and another embarrassment that should have been easily avoidable.

Sadly, it already appears that the company is trying to move on from this, with no lessons learned. As a result, it’s virtually a guarantee that this will happen again and again in the future.

While that would be bad for any company, it’s especially bad for WotC as they are a company that is built on art and artists. This is literally a core part of their business and it’s one they continuously keep dropping the ball on.

What Happened This Time

Over the weekend, WotC held its annual MagicCon event in Las Vegas. The event targets Magic: The Gathering fans and includes a series of high-profile tournaments and other events. One of those events was a preview panel; there they announced some of their upcoming MTG sets.

One of those sets is based on The Lord of the Rings and is entitled The Hobbit (Universes Beyond). From that set, WotC showed off several cards, including the titular One Ring card.

However, it didn’t take long for fans to notice that this card was eerily familiar. A thread on /r/MagicTCG highlighted the similarities between the new card, by artist Dan Frazier, and the same card from a previous set by artist Marta Neal.

Essentially, the ring was identical between the two cards. The only differences were that the image was flipped and that the runes on the ring were removed.

News outlets quickly picked up on the story. Kotaku, Polygon, and Gizmodo all covered the story.

What makes this story worse for WotC is that Frazier is not a new artist or a one-time contributor. Frazier is a well-known artist who has worked on many of the most iconic MTG cards and has worked with WotC for over 30 years.

Frazier and WotC released a statement on the issues via BlueSky. In it, they acknowledge that the similarities are “not coincidental.” Frazier said that he was, “looking at references online” and ended up painting over Neal’s work. WotC, in their statement, said that this was unintentional and that they are working to make things right with Neal.

A message from Dan Frazier and Wizards of the Coast:

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— Magic: The Gathering (@magic.wizards.com) May 2, 2026 at 6:00 PM

This includes adding her name to the new card and paying her for the use of her work. The statement concluded by saying that, “This is a good time to recognize that we are all humans who make mistakes. Dan made a mistake. We made mistakes in our process to not catch the error.”

However, given WotC’s track record, that statement beggars belief. This isn’t the first time that WotC has had an issue with plagiarized artwork. It’s not even the fifth.

A Long History of Plagiarism Issues

The recent history of WotC’s plagiarism issues starts in April 2021. That was when longtime freelance artist Jason Felix was accused of plagiarizing a piece of fan art for a card. Then in May 2023, shortly after the fight over D&D’s licensing, the company was accused of removing an artist’s signature from a movie poster. Months later, in August, the company faced allegations of plagiarized art in a D&D sourcebook.

Then, just months after that, in November, the story returns to MTG as another artist was accused of plagiarizing a different card. Then, just two months after that, in January 2024, the company was accused of not disclosing the use of AI as part of a promotional campaign.

However, after that, things actually got quiet for a while. 2025 was a notably quiet year for WotC on the plagiarism front. Instead, the allegations were dominated by the video game developer Bungie and The Pokémon Company.

But, this story brings the spotlight back to WotC. In this context, this may be the worst one yet. Not only does it involve one of the best-known artists in MTG history, but it involves the same card from a previous set. Essentially, this should have been the easiest plagiarism to prevent or catch. Yet, WotC still failed to do either.

While the statements from both WotC and Frazier sound good and say a lot of the right things, they ring hollow when you examine the company’s track record. Yes, it’s nice for WotC to say that they made a mistake, but this isn’t the first time they’ve made this exact mistake. It’s at least the sixth in roughly five years.

WotC has had every opportunity to fix this issue. This case just proves how little progress they have made. 2025 was supposed to be the year that WotC turned the corner on this issue, but now it looks like a fluke.

Bottom Line

My favorite comment on this story came from Tasty Tibet on BlueSky.

It's almost like you're doing way too much way too fast and things like this slip through the cracks because you're QA checks and balances are stretched way too thin. Oh, if only millions of people around the world had been screaming about this for two years.

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— Tasty Tibalt (@tastytibalt.bsky.social) May 2, 2026 at 6:35 PM

The only change I would make is to change two years to five years because the problems have been going on for at least that long.

I also agree with others that this doesn’t feel like a “mistake.” While I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt and forgiving them for errors, this was a flagrant copy and paste operation. It was either deliberate or grossly negligent. Either way, it’s difficult to pass it off as just human error.

That said, I do think that some deference should be given to Frazier because of his 30-year history. But, to me, that makes it all the more important to figure out what happened here. According to some commenters, he was working in an unfamiliar medium, namely digital. What role, if any, did that play?

But WotC is refusing to do a serious investigation into the incident. They’re asking for forgiveness without taking any real responsibility for the problem. Real responsibility comes with accountability, a full investigation into what happened, and a detailed plan to prevent this from happening again.

What WotC and Frazier are doing instead is saying that it was an error and asking for forgiveness. Forgiveness can be great, but when you look at WotC’s track record, it doesn’t feel as if they’ve learned anything from the previous incidents and will learn nothing from this one.

If that’s the case, then this is something that will happen again. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

WotC owes its fans more than just a mea culpa. It owes them real change, real transparency, and real accountability. Until they do that, they will just keep bouncing from plagiarism crisis to plagiarism crisis.