Bungie pins Marathon art plagiarism on former employee, promises to “do right” by original artist

With Bungie building up to the launch of their new extraction shooter Marathon, the studio has been accused of plagiarising art for their game, with examples found within videos and screenshots of the game’s alpha build. Bungie has responded to these accusations and put the blame on a former artist, pledging to perform a review of in-game assets and to implement stricter checks on contributions going forward.

Digital artist Antireal took to social media to highlight that their work was being lifted by Bungie yesterday, higlighting some key examples where glyphs and sections of posters created in 2017 were being used as decals and textures in Marathon.

In response, Bungie used their @MarathonDevTeam accounts (their account with 10,300 followers on Twitter, instead of 117,700 for @MarathonTheGame or 2.8 million for @Bungie) to issue the following statement:

“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.

“This issue was unknown by our existing art team, and we are still reviewing how this oversight occurred. 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. As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission.

“To prevent similar issues in the future, we are conducting a thorough review of our in-game assets, specifically those done by the former Bungie artist, and implementing stricter checks to document all artist contributions.

“We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”

We hope that financial renumeration and credit is on the table as a part of “doing right by them”.

While plagiarism is a massive no-no, taking inspiration and copying idea is pretty much inevitable. It is fair to say, of course, that art is constantly evolving and drawing upon previous work for inspiration. You could just as easily draw a line back to the Wipeout franchise for the style of their glyphs and general designs, while Marathon Art Director Joseph Cross has publicly noted Mirror’s Edge, Ghost in the Shell and others as inspirations.

All of this is deeply disappointing as Bungie has been caught doing similar things in the past. In 2021 Bungie used fan art in a Destiny 2 trailer, and then for another Destiny 2 cutscene in 2023, and then ended up compensating an artist after using their work for the physical Destiny 2 Nerf Blaster.