Following plagiarism accusations, Bungie admits Marathon is using some stolen artwork

The Halo and Destiny franchise creator's next major release is currently in the public testing phase, with Bungie slowly letting fans jump into its Marathon reboot to try out the extraction shooter experience. However, the alpha test has revealed some troubling information regarding the art assets the title uses, with an artist who is not affiliated with Bungie recognizing her work being used without permission.

The artist, named Antireal, shared multiple side-by-side comparisons as evidence that showed Marathon environmental art assets using designs straight from her work from 2017. Looking at the designs, even the text from her artwork seems to be copied and used in the game, though with a lot of grime and erase marks on them for added effect.

Several Bungie artists have also been following her work on social media for some years now too, including Marathon franchise art director Joseph Cross. Antireal has confirmed that the studio has never communicated with her.

"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," said the artist on social media. "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."

A few hours ago, Bungie put out a statement of its own via the Marathon development team social media page on X, admitting that the game does use artwork from Antireal without permission:

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.

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.

As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission.

The Sony-owned company added that it is doing an internal review of assets to make sure no other problems like this pop up in the future and implementing stricter checks for documenting artist contributions. "We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them," it added.