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Bungie's Marathon reboot accused of plagiarism by Brit artist, leading to delay concerns

It's been a rough week for Bungie, with the Destiny developer hit by plagiarism accusations for its upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon here's all we know so far

[Bungie's Marathon]

Marathon's art style has come under fire from a Scottish artist

Destiny 2 developer Bungie has been busy in recent weeks, revealing a reveal a series of expansions for its popular shooter, while also unveiling the first gameplay reveal of its Marathon reboot.

While the latter has drawn plaudits for its art style, it has now emerged that much of it is built using assets from a Scottish artist, Fern Hook who goes by the moniker 4nt1r34l.

The Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs I made in 2017, Hook explained on X (formerly Twitter) last week.

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, but clearly my work was good enough to pillage for ideas and plaster all over their game without pay or attribution.

Bungie's Marathon faces delay concerns

Bungie has confirmed the accusation is correct, suggesting a departed staff artist was responsible for using Hook's art without her permission.

On Friday's Marathon developer stream, the game's art director Joseph Cross is working to review the in-game assets and remove "inappropriately sourced" designs, while saying that Bungie has reached out to Hook to "do right" by the artist, but no details were given.

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 then placed them on a decal sheet that was then checked in in 2020, Cross said (thanks, VGC).

The decal sheet included icon and text elements, which ended up in our alpha build. Theres absolutely no excuse for this oversight, and we are working on and are 100% committed to a review process to ensure that instances like this dont happen again at Bungie.

[Bungie's Marathon]

Could Bungie's new game be delayed?

A new report from Forbes over the weekend has suggested that morale at Bungie is low, following middling reception to the game's Closed Alpha.

"Sony and Bungie legal are now sorting through this and there is unlikely to be any much new information as all of this continues to unfold. It is not clear how long an audit will take of the assets to remove or find any more plagiarism, as its an expansive enough process to have Bungie not even show any footage at all in its recent livestream."

"Morale is in free-fall across all departments, and the vibes have never been worse. Everyone has the same concerns about what happens to Bungie as a studio if Marathon bombs, which is something they absolutely cannot afford."

Curiously, Forbes reports that there are no talks at the studio about a potential delay from the September release date internally, but this could be happening "privately between higher-up Sony and Bungie leadsership"/

Bungie has reportedly needed to pull its plan to release a trailer in June, and the public beta in August may see big changes, too.

It's a concerning shift from the optimism around the game's aesthetic during the recent gameplay reveal.

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