As Bungie will get prepared for the September 23 launch of its PvPvE extraction shooter Marathon, the studio has discovered itself embroiled in a brand new controversy. A visible artist, going by Antireal, has taken to social media platform X accusing Bungie of stealing the creative type and design parts from tasks she had labored on again in 2017.
In her submit, Antireal stated, “the Marathon alpha launched just lately and its environments are lined with property lifted from poster designs I made in 2017.” She went on to say that, whereas Bungie wasn’t obligated to supply her a job for her design work, the corporate outright stealing her concepts with out acceptable attribution or compensation wasn’t factor.
“Bungie is after all not obligated to rent me when making a sport that pulls overwhelmingly from the identical design language I’ve refined for the final decade, however clearly my work was ok to pillage for concepts and plaster throughout their sport with out pay or attribution,” wrote Antireal.
“I don’t have the assets nor the vitality to spare to pursue this legally however I’ve misplaced rely of the variety of occasions a serious firm has deemed it simpler to pay a designer to mimic or steal my work than to put in writing me an electronic mail.”
“In 10 years I’ve by no means made a constant revenue from this work and I’m uninterested in designers from big firms moodboarding and parasitising my designs whereas I battle to make a residing.”
Antireal’s posts are accompanied by a bunch of photographs showcasing a few of her work, which does bear a hanging resemblance to the general design language we’ve seen from the assorted trailers and art work launched for Marathon over the past couple of years. Some parts from Antireal’s artwork appear to be outright lifted and pasted into Marathon, together with phrases like “Aleph” which function prominently within the artist’s work.
In response, Bungie took to X to substantiate that Antireal’s work was certainly seemingly used through the growth of Marathon. Nevertheless, the studio notes that this concern was unknown for its artwork group, and that it’s taking investigating how this sort of slip up may occur. Bungie has referred to using Antireal’s work in Marathon’s textures an “unauthorised use of artist decals.”
“This concern was unknown by our current artwork group, and we’re nonetheless reviewing how this oversight occurred,” wrote the studio. “We take issues like this very severely. We’ve got reached out to [Antireal] to debate this concern and are dedicated to do proper by the artist.”
“As a matter of coverage, we don’t use the work of artists with out their permission.”
Bungie has additionally stated that, transferring ahead, it is going to be conducting a radical overview of its in-game property to make sure that there are stricter checks to doc artist contributions. “We worth the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our video games, and we’re dedicated to doing proper by them,” it wrote. “Thanks for bringing this to our consideration.”
Marathon is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Collection X/S, and is at the moment present process playtests.
