Bungie, the video game studio behind massive hits like Halo and Destiny, has admitted to using art in its upcoming game Marathon without the artist in question’s permission. Posting on Twitter/X, the development team for Marathon—an extraction shooter based on one of the company’s oldest IPs—says that it began investigating claims earlier this week, shortly after artist 4nt1r34l (a.k.a. Antireal) publicized accusations that art in the just-released Marathon alpha contained images lifted directly from posters she designed and posted online back in 2017.
Per the MarathonDevTeam Twitter account: “We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game.” Screenshots posted by Antireal clearly show multiple instances where their work appear to have been imported directly into the game, which Bungie devs acknowledged. “This issue was unknown by our existing art team, and we are still reviewing how this oversight occurred,” the team wrote on social media. “We take matters like this very seriously. We have reached out to @4nt1r34l to discuss this issue and are committed to do right by the artist.” (Which, as many people have noted, dances around questions about how, beyond instances of individual plagiarism, the overall look of the game seems to draw strongly from Antireal’s style, while also putting blame squarely on an unnamed former employee.) The company says it intends to do a full review of art assets for the game, which is set to get a full release in September.
The Washington Post‘s Gene Park spoke with Antireal (a Scottish artist and musician whose real name is Fran Hook) about the issues this week, in which Hook noted that, “It was kind of vindicating to see direct plagiarism because it meant I wasn’t crazy for feeling so uncomfortable with the overall direction. I kept quiet about it because I was advised to seek legal action, but … I don’t have enough time or money to fly out to the U.S. to pursue an unwinnable court case against [Bungie owner] Sony.”
