Bungie’s Marathon Art Controversy: Apologies, Scrutiny, and a Whole Lot of Memes

Alright gamers, buckle up. Remember last week when indie artist Antireal dropped the hammer and accused Bungie of lifting her cool, distinct designs for their upcoming Marathon reboot? Well, things have escalated, and a recent livestream from the Bungie camp definitely got… interesting.

It started with a pretty solid accusation: folks noticed some art elements in Marathon’s environment looked remarkably, undeniably similar to iconography Antireal had created back in 2017. Think posters, decals – those little bits that build out a game world. And yeah, it didn’t help that several Bungie artists apparently followed her online. Cue the outrage machine.

Bungie hit back with a statement, admitting to “unauthorized use” and pointing the finger at a former employee who, they say, snuck these designs into a texture sheet. They claimed the current art team was clueless and promised to figure out how the heck this oversight happened. They also said they’d reached out to Antireal to make things right. Standard damage control, right?

But then came the livestream. Marathon’s game director Joe Ziegler and art director Joseph Cross jumped on stream to address the mess head-on. Cross kicked things off with another apology. Now, gotta say, watching this stream was a bit rough. Cross looked totally wiped, clearly feeling the weight of the situation. Regardless of how this all shakes out legally or financially for Antireal, you could tell this whole thing is taking a toll on the folks at Bungie.

Chat vs. Developer: A Battle of Memes

The livestream chat, though? Less empathetic, shall we say. Marathon’s official tagline is “ESCAPE WILL MAKE ME GOD.” The chat section, in a display of peak internet memery, quickly transformed this into “PLAGIARISM WILL MAKE ME GOD” and absolutely spammed it. Non-stop. With variations. Savage.

Somehow, Cross powered through an hour of this, fielding questions despite the meme-storm. One big question everyone wanted answered: How is Bungie going to compensate Antireal? And why are they scrubbing the assets instead of just hiring the artist whose work they seemingly admired (or at least, someone at their company did)?

Cross addressed this, stating they believe the vast majority of Marathon’s assets are original and created internally. He added that they would “love to work with Antireal if that’s an opportunity that presents itself,” mentioning contracting, collaborating, or even hiring her were possibilities – part of the conversation they wanted to have with her.

It’s worth noting, as Cross explained, this accusation has morphed a bit online. While Bungie definitely used *some* of Antireal’s iconography, the narrative online has blown up into claims that Marathon’s *entire* art style is supposedly ripped off from this one artist. That, according to Cross, is just not the case. He emphasized that it’s a “very small set of assets,” like decals used on buildings or crates.

Ziegler chimed in, echoing the need to scrub the assets. “Something slipped through our net,” he admitted. They’re doing a full check of everything to make absolutely sure no other uncredited work snuck in. It caught them off guard, and they want to do their due diligence to prevent a repeat performance.

Not Bungie’s First Rodeo: A Pattern Emerges?

While Bungie is owning up to this latest gaffe, the internet’s sympathy levels seem pretty low. Why? Probably because, and let’s be real here, this is apparently the fourth time in four years something like this has happened. Yikes.

• Last Year: Fan art appeared in the design for a Destiny 2 Nerf gun. Bungie admitted it, promised compensation and credit.
• 2023: A Destiny 2 in-game cutscene featured artwork copied from another artist. Again, Bungie promised credit and compensation.
• 2021: Fanart of Xivu Arath was “accidentally used” in a trailer for Destiny 2’s Witch Queen expansion. Bungie confirmed the mistake.

See a pattern? This history certainly fuels the fire for those unforgiving livestream comments.

The YouTube comments under the stream were brutal. One user, “SunCityRebel,” wryly referenced Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias, pointing out how Marathon’s cinematic used a poem about fallen empires lost to time – a bit on the nose, maybe? Others went for direct jabs:

• “I would write an original comment, but I don’t see any good ones to plagarize” (Chef’s kiss to that one).
• “art extraction shooter genre.” (Okay, also pretty good).
• 

The game’s subreddit also saw its share of commentary, though some folks were a little more understanding. One user, Marikal, posted:

“I think it’s a good apology. You guys make it seem like this guy is an evil mastermind stealing stuff on purpose. What happened was some contractor working under him stole stuff back in 2020 and it slipped past him. Yes it is his responsibility, and so he is trying to make it right and fix it, but it’s not like he wanted this.”