On Thursday, May 15, 2025, an artist known as Antireal accuses the game Marathon “That she hasn't been released yet but recently had an alpha test,” having used his art without permission. The evidence he provided did not leave much to doubt and that caused a rapid response from Bungie, the developers of this title.
The accusation was given through the official account of the artist in Bluesky. Antireal says that some of the textures used in objects of the alpha test of the game are directly taken from posters that she did in 2017. As proof, she published captures of Marathon next to your work. You can see that they are too similar and multiple cases, so it could not be a coincidence.
Later in the same thread, Antireal says that he does not have the resources or energy to make a legal demand and complains about the treatment that large companies make of small designers like her.
Although there was no threat of demand, this case reached Bungie ears, which acted surprisingly fast. Through a thread of publications in the official account of the developer team of Marathon A Twitterthe company explained the following:
«We immediately investigated concerns about the authorized use of an artist's designs in Marathon And we confirm that a former Bungie artist included these on a texture sheet that was used in the game. This issue was unknown to our current art team and we are investigating how it happened. We take this very seriously and we have communicated with Antireal to discuss this and compensate for it. We have the policy of not using the work of artists without their permission ».
We are glad that Bungie has reacted quickly to this case of art robbery and we hope to adequately compensate for the artist. However, we cannot ignore that this is not the first time something similar happens. In 2021, 2023 and 2024 there were cases of fanart used “accidentally” in Destiny 2. In all cases the artists were compensated and the right credit was given, but it is clear that there is a problem in Bungie.
They can learn more about Marathon Following this link.
