Marathon developer Bungie has confirmed the game featured stolen artwork, with certain assets submitted during development being lifted directly from artist Antireal (aka 4nt1r34l). The issue first came to light on X, where Antireal alleged the Marathon alpha was “covered with assets lifted from poster designs [they] made in 2017.”
Investigations by Bungie later revealed this was exactly the case. “We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorised 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 Marathon development team said on X.
“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.”
Bungie is currently in the process of conducting a “thorough review” of all in-game assets for Marathon, specifically “those done by the former Bungie artist” who is accused of taking Antireal’s work without permission. It has also pledged to implement “stricter checks” on all submitted artwork, in an effort to the prevent this situation happening again.
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What’s worth noting is this isn’t the first time Bungie has been accused of plagiarism. As surfaced by Eurogamer in its reporting, Bungie was previously accused of taking artwork for use in Destiny 2, with at least two artists alleged their work was used in-game, without permission.
At the very least, Antireal’s allegations are seemingly being actively addressed, with Bungie confirming it’s reached out to the artist to “do right” by them. As a result of its asset investigation, Bungie also recently pulled gameplay footage from a weekly Marathon livestream.
Rather than showing off footage, game director Joe Ziegler appeared to explain the situation, and confirm the team had “decided not to show a bunch of this stuff” to be “respectful of the situation.”
“It came to our attention that an artist who worked on Marathon in the early stages of pre-production took a number of graphic elements from a graphic designer, without permission or acknowledgement, and placed them on a decal sheet that was then checked in, in 2020,” art director Joe Cross said during this livestream.
“The decal sheet included icons and text elements. These elements ended up in our alpha build and there is absolutely no excuse for this oversight, and we are working on, and 100% committed to, our review process to ensure instances like this don’t happen again on Marathon or at Bungie.”
Going forward, Bungie will review all artwork included in Marathon, and will hopefully take a more active stance in preventing the exploitation of artist’s work in future.
