Bungie was more than inspired for the art design of the futuristic sci-fi shooter.
The shooter marathon, which is eagerly awaited, but also critically eyed, is suddenly found in the center of a tangible plagiarism scandal. An artist raises serious allegations: Your designs ended up in the game without permission or naming.
The allegations in detail
Imagine you suddenly see your creative works in an AAA title without anyone asking or rewarding you for it. This is exactly what the freelance artist claims, who appears under the pseudonym anti -realer.
She accuses Bungie that the recently shown alpha version of marathon is “paved” with elements that come directly from her poster designs-and partly from 2017.
Antivreal underpinned their accusations with detailed comparison images: It shows striking similarities between her original works and content, which can be seen in in-game environments and even in promotion materials for marathon.
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It's not about vague inspiration: The artist speaks of directly adopted visual elements, fonts, layout structures and entire icon sequences. A particularly brazen example that she gives is the use of her own logo and specific text elements such as “Aleph Dark-Space Haulage Logistics” or a rectangle with the inscription “Antreall Daily Series”, which should appear almost identical in the game.
The understandably angry artist comments on this:
Obviously, my work was good enough to be looted for ideas and being distributed throughout the game without payment or naming. […] I have neither the means nor the energy to act legally, but I have long since stopped counting how often large companies found it easier to pay a designer, to imitate or steal my work than to write me an email.
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Eight years after Destiny 2, the legendary developer reveals the next big shooter: marathon
A former employee should be to blame
The allegations naturally made tall waves, and bungie was forced to react quickly. In an official statement, the studio admitted that there was actually an unauthorized use of artist decals in marathon.
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The blame for this is postponed by a “former bungie artist”who is said to have inserted these elements into a texture collection that ultimately ended up in the game.
The current art team, Bungie continued, knew nothing about this takeover. Now examine internally how this error could happen. The studio emphasizes that such matters have been taken very seriously and have already contacted anti -Real to “do the right thing for the artist”.
In addition, Bungie announced a thorough review of all in-game assets and wants to implement stricter controls in order to correctly document the contributions of all artists and avoid such incidents in the future.
Spicy details
For many observers, however, this explanation is a little too simple. The fact that Joseph Cross, Art Director of Marathon, has long followed the artist on social media platforms.
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This raises the question of how ignorant the team could have been when the source of inspiration was so obviously known and the leading creative head.
In addition, it is not the first time that bungie is confronted with allegations of plagiarism. In the past, too, there have been similar cases related to Destiny 2, in which the studio grant mistakes and had to agree with the artists concerned.
