Key Takeaways
- Bungie is facing accusations of art theft for their upcoming game Marathon, similar to a previous incident with Destiny 2.
- Visual artist Antireal claims Bungie stole elements from her poster art created in 2017 and used them in Marathon’s closed alpha test.
- Comparisons and overlays of Antireal’s work with in-game assets reveal a close match, with some users finding her watermark in gameplay footage.
Bungie once again finds itself in a situation where an artist claims the studio is stealing their work, less than a year after admitting to the first accusation. Though instead of it being Destiny, this time it’s for their upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon.
It’s not just a single piece of art, either. It appears that Bungie has stolen years of work from the artist, with evidence even showing traces of their watermark within Bungie’s game.
Marathon’s Unique Art Direction Might Have All Been Inspired From One Uncredited Artist
As revealed on X by visual artist Antireal, Bungie allegedly stole elements from her art, specifically a poster she created in 2017. She starts things off by showing some examples of her work lifted and used within the closed alpha test of Marathon.
the Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs i made in 2017.@Bungie @josephacross pic.twitter.com/0Csbo48Jgb
— N² (@4nt1r34l) May 15, 2025
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. pic.twitter.com/G3FbPtbPJD
— N² (@4nt1r34l) May 15, 2025
And yes, that poster is 8 years old as she shared it on X back in 2017:
170715 pic.twitter.com/E2g0kggQcv
— N² (@4nt1r34l) July 16, 2017
She goes on to say: “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. 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.”
Although much of that looks like random lines and symbols, it’s how similar, and how closely it matches the original work by Antireal, so much so that many users have pointed out that if you overlay some of the ingame stuff with her art, it’s an exact match. A user on ResetEra created the following GIF, to show just how much the art matches.
If this wasn’t evident enough, users have even spotted in some gameplay videos leftover watermarking of her work. Here’s the image in question, as well as the focus point of where the watermark was left, and the original watermarking in her work. The second image has been edited, as in mirrored, so that you can see that it’s clearly the same thing.
It’s obvious that the scrubbed-out text reads “Antireal daily series”, essentially confirming that the art was stolen. Whether this was run through AI or done by a human, they didn’t do a good job of hiding anything here. It’s not a good look for Bungie either, especially since this comes almost a year after they admitted art was stolen from another artist by one of their vendors and used in Destiny 2.
If, for whatever reason, that still isn’t convincing, then consider this: Bungie’s franchise Art Director, Joseph Cross, also happens to be following Antireal on socials. Yeah, doesn’t sound like a random coincidence with all this put out there.
Bungie has now issued a statement via the “Marathon Dev Team” Twitter/X /X account stating:
“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.
We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
To prevent similar issues in the future, we are conducting a thorough review of our in-game assets, specifically those done by the former Bungie artist, and implementing stricter checks to document all artist contributions.”
Honestly, this is disheartening to see from a studio such as Bungie. For how big they are, and how many resources they have, to see them steal someone’s work, and use it in another game like this? And for a second time now? Yeah, this is not good.
This isn’t just art used in some random one piece either, as Marathon’s entire art direction is almost shaped by this work when you really think about it. Looking at the various gameplay videos out there, you can see just how much of this art is seen throughout the environment, to the point that it may be part of the made-up language they built for the game, with all those weird shapes and symbols they’ve been using throughout promotional material.
