One of the most striking things about Bungie’s Marathon is its presentation. The sci-fi extraction shooter combines bleak settings with bright colors in a way that makes it feel a bit like a sneaker promo meets Ghost in the Shell, or as designer Jeremy Skoog put it, “Y2K Cyberpunk mixed with Acid Graphic Design Posters.” But it now looks like at least a few of the visual design elements that appeared in the recent alpha test were lifted from an eight-year old work by an outside artist.
“The Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs i made in 2017,” Bluesky user antire.al posted on Thursday. She shared two images showing elements of her work and where they appeared in Marathon’s gameplay, including a rotated version of her own logo. A poster full of small repeating icon patterns also seems to be all but recreated in Marathon’s press kit ARG and website.
“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,” antire.al wrote. “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.”
How could something like this have happened? One possibility is that the art was used for placeholder assets that were supposed to be replaced or overhauled later on but never were. A less generous version is that someone at Bungie or the agencies it outsources to cut corners and knowingly lifted the work or used it as inspiration without compensation or attribution. Bungie didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
This isn’t the first time the PlayStation-owned studio has gotten into hot water for this sort of thing. In 2023, Destiny 2 fanart turned up in a major cutscene for the massive sci-fi MMO. In 2024, old fan art was plagiarized for an Ace of Space Exotic ornament and NERF gun replica. Bungie agreed to pay the artists and apologized in both instances. The studio has also been on the receiving end as well, with last year’s The First Descendant lifting ability and perk icons directly from Destiny 2 before later removing them.
Marathon’s alpha wrapped up earlier this month, leaving fans impressed by the shooting and moment-to-moment feel but torn on its implementation of the extraction shooter formula. What’s not in doubt is that the worldbuilding and sci-fi interiors are some of the most intriguing work Bungie’s done in years, a virtue now partly tarnished by allegations of plagiarism in certain aspects of the aesthetic.
“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,” antire.al wrote.
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