Bungie is at the centre of a scandal again: artist accuses Marathon developers of stealing her work

For Sony, the last 24 hours have been extremely unfortunate: The Fairgames live game seems to be falling apart before our eyes, and now another Sony subsidiary, Bungie, is forced to respond to serious plagiarism allegations.

Here's What We Know

Last night, an artist and illustrator under the nickname 4nt1r34l posted on Twitter evidence of how the developers of the upcoming action shooter Marathon shamelessly copied her posters designed back in 2017.

"The alpha of Marathon was recently released and its environment is filled with assets copied from my 2017 poster designs," the artist wrote. - Of course, Bungie is under no obligation to hire me to create a game that relies heavily on the same visual language I've been perfecting for the past decade, but apparently my work was good enough to be plundered for free and plastered all over their game without attribution. I have neither the resources nor the extra energy to pursue this legally, but I've lost count of the number of times a large company has chosen to pay a designer to imitate or steal my work rather than write me an email.

Bungie responded almost instantly, acknowledging the allegations and promising to rectify the situation. Here's their official statement:

"We immediately investigated the concerns about the unauthorised use of art elements in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included them in the texture sheet that was ultimately used in the game. Our current art team was unaware of this issue and we are still investigating how this mistake occurred. We take issues like this very seriously. We have reached out to @4nt1r34l to discuss the issue and we are committed to doing right by the artist."

This is not the first such incident in the company's history. Earlier, Bungie was already in a similar situation when it used fan art in a Destiny 2 cutscene, explaining that it was mistakenly used by a supplier as a reference. At that time, the company also apologised and promised to compensate the original artist. The problem with this particular case of Marathon is that much of the game's appeal lies in its visual style, and now it appears that elements of that style were borrowed without attribution from another person. The situation is unpleasant, to say the least.

Source: @4nt1r34l