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.
The work in question (from the article):
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, it’s a really shitty pattern. Unfortunate, I was kinda looking forward to Marathon despite the drama.
NGL giving them lots of grace, I can still see this being one employee lifting things and getting away with it. Ofc this is extending a whole olive tree to Bungie, but it’s still possible.
That said, there is a pattern suggesting at least someone has done this intentionally and managed to not get fired for it for quite a while and that’s very poor management. If it happened once, I could even see a stern talk, but if they’re not fired the second time they do it, that’s on management and on the whole company.
I’m, so sorry for the other artists and devs working on this game who basically get all of their work undermined by party fouls from someone else.
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.
I can almost guarantee you that what happened is that Antireal’s art was saved to one of the artists’ “inspiration” folders, and somewhere between creating an inspo gallery and that artist quitting/getting laid off, the files got merged into a “concept/assets” folder. Likely when going through the laid off artist’s hard drives, they found images that they probably assumed were all originals.
Another theory I’ve considered is that the artist may have known they were about to be laid off, and intentionally merged the folders in secret to sabotage the game. But I feel like that’d be hard to cover your tracks on, so I’m going to apply Hanlon’s Razor to this.
I can almost guarantee you that what happened is that Antireal’s art was saved to one of the artists’ “inspiration” folders, and somewhere between creating an inspo gallery and that artist quitting/getting laid off, the files got merged into a “concept/assets” folder. Likely when going through the laid off artist’s hard drives, they found images that they probably assumed were all originals.
I’ve worked in games for 18 years, and outright theft of assets happens constantly. I worked on a game where an artist took an asset (from a rather well known game) and outright used it, no changes. Another place I worked an artist took an (extremely unique) weapon from an IP and just copied it over.
If you look at the Bungie art it couldn’t possibly be an inspo gallery because they are just straight up used with (some) changes made to them. This was absolutely known to have occurred, and wasn’t ‘an’ artist. You can see why they do this because even in the event they’re caught, they can blame a former employee, and pay some nominal fee for the actual artists work.
If you look at the Bungie art it couldn’t possibly be an inspo gallery because they are just straight up used with (some) changes made to them.
That’s why I’m thinking the folders were merged in error. Bungie makes a lot of stupid decisions, but I think “willfully stealing art and assuming nobody would ever find out as we heavily advertise our game to get as many eyes on the product as humanly possible” is too stupid, even for them.
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.
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/)
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.
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”?
Recent official Twitch stream https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GrGjLnGXwAE0hdV.jpg
Oh wow that was incredible, hahaha.
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)
