Morale at Bungie reportedly in “free fall” after disastrous art plagiarism fiasco and horrendous community-facing live stream

It’s been reported by Forbes that developers at Bungie, the studio behind Destiny 2 and the upcoming extraction shooter Marathon, are tanking some serious damage to their will. According to the report, morale is in “free fall” following revelations that work from artist Antireal was used in Marathon without permission.

Marathon art director Joe Cross and game director Joe Ziegler teamed up for a community-facing livestream on May 16, which was already scheduled prior to news of the plagiarism breaking, but naturally saw the devs address the controversy rather than proceeding as normal. In what proved to be an awkward and frankly hard to watch event, Cross read out an official statement he wrote about what’s next regarding Antireal’s work in Marathon in place of a planned showcase of art which, for obvious reasons, didn’t happen.

Cross stated: “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. 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.

“A few of the things that we’ve done to shore up the review process are as follows: We’ve reached out to Antireal to follow up to make sure we do right by this artist. We’re auditing all of the previous work by the internal artist, including environment decals already in the build, which is why we’re delaying some of the content we were going to show today. We’re committed to removing that is questionably or innapropriately sourced. We’re doing a broad decal audit, and if we find any other details or elements, we’ll make sure they are eliminated and recreated in-house for sure.

“Hundreds of artists have worked on this project for years intenrally and externally, and we share many influences including modernism, Swiss typography, 2000’s style vector art, Cyber Punk, and of course the original Marathon trilogy. Our style is a result of all of those inspirations, and it’s worth noting that none of our external partners who have worked on branding or the visual design of our game were involved in this situation.”

This statement didn’t go down especially well with live viewers of the stream, with the majority of the questions coming from chat live relating to the Marathon art and how exactly Bungie would make right by Antireal. Since this stream wrapped up, community sentiment remains largely sceptical, pending the results of the audit mentioned in the statement.

Enter Forbes’ article, published a day after this stream, in which Paul Tassi reported having been told by staff at Bungie that “the vibes have never been worse”. In addition, he claimed to have been told that the staff are worried what will happen if Marathon bombs. Bungie, having suffered wave after wave of layoffs of recent years, is in desperate need for a big financial win these days.

Tassi also reported that the public-facing explanation for the art theft is the same being given internally, and that legal teams from Bungie and Sony are currently sorting through this issue. Also, the report alleges Marathon was pitched by “good old boy” leadership at Bungie, which it claims has been been ignoring developer input on what Marathon should/shouldn’t have for years, including the idea that the game should have a PvE element – the absence
of which is proving to be a major sour point for some alpha testers.

We recommend reading Forbes’ article for the full report, but it’s safe to say that it’s been a particularly bad few days for Bungie and the Marathon team. Bungie, a company which is no stranger to plagiarism controversy, finds itself stuck in the mud in yet another debacle. This one coming roughly months ahead of the planned release date for Marathon likely spells trouble for the game’s prospects, especially if it can’t shake this negative sentiment.