Artist Shocked To Find Her Poster Designs From 2017 In Bungie's Marathon: 'A Major Company Has Deemed It Easier To Pay A Designer To Imitate Or Steal My Work Than To Write Me An Email' [Update]

I've lost all respect for Bungie at this point. Their games have been shit for a few years, but this is a really low bar...

Apparently it's a former Bungie artist that included stolen work in internal assets and didn't tell anyone.
For once, it sounds like a genuine "oh f*k", and not corporate excuses. What we can hope is that the actual artist behind the art gets compensated for their work, and that the assets get replaced if they ask for it.
- That would be a credible excuse if this were the first time it happened. But it's at least the fourth time it has happened. They seem to be going for the "steal first and then 'do right by the artist' if they get caught" route of design 🙄
  Who knows what else they've lifted from artists that just haven't caught on yet.
  https://x.com/Cozmo23/status/1442534201165635587
  https://www.pcgamer.com/bungie-says-it-will-compensate-and-credit-artist-whose-work-was-mistakenly-used-in-this-weeks-major-destiny-2-cutscene/
  https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/whoops-they-did-it-again-bungie-admits-fan-art-was-used-in-an-official-destiny-2-collectible-says-the-artist-will-be-compensated-and-credited-for-their-incredible-artwork/
- I’m not sure. Looks like these assets make up a large part of the game’s design identity. I doubt they just hand this work to some person and just go with whatever first version they produced. This kind of thing should be iterated on with feedback from relevant stakeholders.
  It’s not a good look. It’s sloppy.
- It's not an artist that included her work. It's multiple artists, including the main art director. They followed her and large portions of the art design in the game are based on her work.
- except that's literally always the excuse. i don't remember any company coming out and saying "yeah it was a corporate decision to steal designs to cut corners". literally always either a former employee or an employee who has been promptly fired.
It sucks so much. Bungie and Blizzard have fallen so hard.
Who knows if it happened the way they say it happened but it seems like they're saying the right things now anyway.

Happens all the time. Usually it doesn't get picked up like this and they just get away with it. Source: It happened to me under a different, purely SFW name. I tried to bring it forward, to get the company to acknowledge it, to get gaming publications involved, no one cared. It's part of why I left digital art behind.

You can post context and the art so that at least we would know.
- I've shared it in the past, even have a writeup about it on some of my profiles. Not wanting to associate it with this account. I still do mostly safe stuff on YouTube under that name, and I do fucking inflation porn under this one.

Back when I was in my mid 20s, I was big into the car scene and Scion was super hot, specifically the Tc. They had a two page ad in a magazine that looked eerily familiar, was a swamp dragon type creature rising from bottom of the pages, arms spreading out some trees, something like that, I don't remember the details.

Anyway, I had seen it before, went searching for it and it was found on DeviantArt, nearly identical. Slightly different creature design, but everything else was unmistakable.

I emailed the designer letting him know what I found, he was from Europe, had never heard of Scion and was very confused as why they took his art. I think he was younger, didn't know what if anything, he could do. But it was clearly stolen. I had bookmarked/saved his art years before I saw the ad, completely unrelated.

This isn't new at all, and sometimes very hard to prove unfortunately.

Found the original swamp dragon- https://www.deviantart.com/reeks/art/Swamp-Dragon-482025

The work in question (from the article):

Oh and of course it's another extraction shooter.

Now they'll blame their failure on that bad buzz instead of admitting it was only a cash grab attempt.

Okay, maybe you're not the right person to ask, but what's the rub with extraction shooters? I've never played one, but I'm seeing them pop up, and they look good. The concept sounds intriguing, so why do you, at least, say they are not good?
- Hello -- living incarnation of the Internet here.
  I've played pretty much every shooter and most multiplayer ones since 1994.
  The main issue with extraction shooters is that they are hardcore PvP-focused with resources lost and resources gained on every match.
  Given that players lose actual lifetime from dying to another player in an extraction shooter, this creates an impetus for many players to cheat, given the asymmetrical distribution of skill in online shooters (it is statistically supposed be a perfect bell curve with everyone being average).
  Without robust anti-cheat (e.g: Invasive kernel-level AC like Valorant/FaceIT and borderline malware) every and any extraction shooter becomes a cheater-ridden hellhole, where all of the resources of every match or map are funneled into the hands of a few players.
  Players burned on prior titles know this ahead of time and throw their hands up in the air and say: "Great, another shitty extraction shooter".
  See: Tarkov et al.
- I’m not anti extraction shooter. It’s just that when I read that I can’t stop thinking about"ok so bungie did a Ubi(soft)"
  Meaning they made a game because it is trendy and they can keep it going as a live service, selling tons of battle passes and cosmetics. This reeks game being made out of C suits economic interests and not out of love for games.
  And just like Ubi, they jumped on the hype train two years late, most probably because some corporate analysts said "there’s shit ton of money to make, that’s what the public wants"
  Except that I’m fairly certain 75% of the players don’t want another live service extraction shooter, they would prefer a new IP born out of love for gaming.
- I think they don't necessarily say that Marathon will be bad (although most signs are pointing that it will be), but that Extraction shooters are very niche. They don't offer long-term progression the way MMOs do yet still require a lot of time (both per match and overall), which drives away a lot of players. Because of these limitations, Marathon wouldn't be able to recoup it's enormous development cost even if the entire extraction shooter player base moved to Marathon over night.
  Now add on top that Marathon looks like absolute slop because the suits at Bungee fired everyone remotely experienced to cut costs and the result will put the game closer to Concord than to Escape from Tarkov (afaik the current #1 extraction shooter) in terms of success.
  If you are interested in (new) extraction shooters, maybe have a look at Arc Raiders. That one looks excellent.

Save a click: The side by side comparisons

Tyyy. Also these are such cool designs. As little as I was actually interested in playing this game, I had to admit the aesthetic was so cool.
I hope the artist is made whole from this, or at last gains some more patrons (https://antireal.info/)

Not a first time for Bungie. Done over and over with Destiny.

Recent official Twitch stream https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GrGjLnGXwAE0hdV.jpg

Oh wow that was incredible, hahaha.

Update 5/16/2025 12:56 a.m. ET: Bungie has responded and blamed the incident on a former employee. The studio says it’s reaching out to the artist in question and conducting a full review of its in-game assets for Marathon. “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,” the studio posted on X.

So, Joseph Cross, the main art director is a "former employee"?
- I didn't catch that. They're obviously POS and only care once they get caught. I'm glad the artist had articles written about it and support behind her. Maybe they'll pay her now?

I'm just always disappointed in how companies absolutely always choose to be scumbags for no reason. Why do this? Why do this and similar things four or five times now? Who is making these calls??

Quirex 4 life.

(But seriously, they thought no one would notice the direct copying... delusional.)

Feisar represent…
I immediately thought of Wipeout too, loved the art design so much. I need to look at that artist’s work… (and apparently Marathon too)

A monied entity who likes to steal of one's labour. Shocking.

Are they going to try to blame this on Alberto Mielgo?

Is this because they use art they find as filler and then forget to replace it, or is it because a graphic designer who was hired on salary just decided to explicitly take someone else's work as their paycheck? The first option seems the most likely, since I'm sure their own artists are quite capable.

Honestly to me this claim seems like a stretch. This artist is not the first person to do these kind of high contrast futuristic acid graphics either.

And then things like claiming the double chevrons, symbols in boxes and "aleph" (which is a marathon thing to begin with) next to some text are directly lifted from their designs when they are also common design elements as well, all just seems like someone trying to milk some fame out of this.

And also you famously can't copyright an artsyle.

Edit: after going through the thread and seeing higher quality images, I take all this back. The symbols in the boxes and the aleph text are litterally exactly the same, this is stealing.

Oh good, you edited your post.