Bungie Is Accused Of Plagiarizing An Artist's Work From Eight Years Ago For Marathon

Bungie's extraction shooter Marathon recently wrapped up a Closed Alpha test, giving the community a closer look at its gameplay as well as design. However, it has revealed some disappointing observations. 

A freelance artist named Antireal has accused Bungie of plagiarizing her work and ideas all over the game. She noted that some of her poster designs from 2017 have been "lifted" in the game's environments. "Clearly my work was good enough to pillage for ideas and plaster all over their game without pay or attribution."

The artist presents a series of proofs highlighting the blatant similarities. In the first picture, it's clear that the elements in her original poster from eight years ago, such as "ALEPH Dark-space haulage logistics -", along with a rectangle formed of slashes beneath the text, have all been used in the game, resembling a simple copy-and-paste with a change of color, and even the font remains unmodified. 

While in the second picture, plagiarism is even more obvious with a larger number of elements being "carried over." The number "28" from her daily series, posted on September 28 of 2017, with a rectangle next to it reading "ANTIREAL DAILY SERIES," has been mirrored while appearing in Marathon. If we look closely, even the text on the rectangle remains visible in the game - someone from the design team might not even bother to modify the artist's "personal note" (see image below). This is not all: the double arrow design and the seven icons on the same poster appear on the game's screen as well. 

Coincidentally, if you would call all of these phenomena "coincidences," some images used in the game's Press Kit and on the homepage also have similar elements to another work by the artist. The way those tiny shapes are arranged and how they got mixed makes them look like lost siblings. 

"I don't have the resources nor the energy to spare to pursue this legally but i have lost count of the number of times a major company has deemed it easier to pay a designer to imitate or steal my work than to write me an email," commented the artist. "In 10 years i have never made a consistent income from this work and i am tired of designers from huge companies moodboarding and parasitising my designs while i struggle to make a living."

Hard work and creative ideas being stolen is already painful; the artist had to deal with a "dual shock" coming from digital publication DualShockers, who had made up a "quote" from the artist, saying she has a full-time job, while this is not the case. The article from the outlet has been deleted. 

The Internet has a memory, so does the community. The reaction from some when seeing this news is that, "again?" Just a few months ago, the company was accused of plagiarizing a fan art that an artist created back in 2015 for their Ace of Spades blaster for Destiny 2; back in 2023, Bungie was accused of taking a fan's artwork and using it in its Destiny 2 cutscene. 

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