Bungie admits its Marathon alpha included stolen artwork

Engadget

16-05-2025

The bright, glitched-out, typography-forward look of Bungie's upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is one of its defining features. As it turns out, it's also partially plagiarized, according to posts shared on the official Marathon X account. The announcement comes after artist Fern Hook, who goes by @4nt1r34l on X, initially accused Bungie of using in-game textures that looked similar to her original artwork on May 15.
"Bungie is of course not obligated to hire me when making a game that draws overwhelmingly from the same design language I have refined for the last decade," Hook wrote on X, "but clearly my work was good enough to pillage for ideas and plaster all over their game without pay or attribution." To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so.
Hook's posts are fairly damning, identifying obvious areas in Marathon 's alpha map that feature only lightly altered versions of her original work. She became aware of the issue when the alpha originally launched in April 2025, according to The Washington Post , but kept quiet until now because she was advised to seek legal action. Hook ultimately decided to post about the issue because she doesn't "have enough time or money to fly out to the US to pursue an unwinnable court case against Sony."
Bungie's statement claims that "a former Bungie artist" included Hook's art in a texture sheet without the rest of the art team's knowledge. The company is "conducting a thorough review of [its] in-game assets" and has also reached out to Hook to "discuss the issue" further.
As Eurogamer notes, this isn't the first time Bungie has been accused of lifting the work of other artists. The developer was accused of doing the same thing multiple times during the development of Destiny 2 and its various expansions.
Since the game is still in development, it's not clear how or if Bungie will change Marathon to address Hook's complaint, but the developer has until September 23 to do it. That's when Marathon is supposed to launch on PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox Series X/S.