16-05-2025
Bungie Confirms Stolen Art Was Used in Marathon, Undertaking a 'Thorough Review'
Bungie has, for a second time, been accused of stealing designs from an independent artist for use in its games. A post from the studio itself later confirmed the accusations.
In a post on X, a visual artist known as Antireal walked through a number of their designs that were stolen and used in the recent Marathon alpha.
These weren't just subtle similarities, but pretty blatantly identical visual designs used in multiple parts of the game.
'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,' Antireal says in a follow-up post, 'But clearly my work was good enough to pillage for ideas and plaster all over their game without pay or attribution.'
In the replies to Antireal's post, a user points out that Marathon franchise art director Joseph Cross follows them on the platform. The artist
A few hours after Antireal's post, an X post from MarathonDevTeam confirmed that there was 'unauthorized' use of art.
Follow-up posts state that this was an issue that was unknown by Marathon's current art team, and the studio is currently looking into how the oversight occurred.
'As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission,' states the MarathonDevTeam account, while confirming it was a 'former Bungie artist' that create the assets.
This is, however, not the first time that Bungie has been accused, and then confirmed, of stealing art. In 2023, the company was accused of using an artist's designs for a Destiny 2 cutscene, with Bungie then reaching out to said artist to apologize. Then again in 2024, Bungie had to admit that fan art was used in the creation of an official Destiny 2 Nerf gun.
While Bungie has said a 'thorough review' is underway with this latest example, it feels like that age-old saying about 'fool me once.' It's becoming harder and harder to see these incidents as harmless mistakes, and not a core problem with the studio's process.
