Bungie is working on cleaning up a mess for its upcoming shooter/extraction game, Marathon, following reports of plagiarism. Last week, Fern Hook (aka 4nt1r341 on X) posted that her art had been used in Marathon without consent or compensation. This quickly gained attention from fans who also confirmed the misappropriated content, but not long after, Bungie initiated its own investigation into the matter. According to Bungie, the assets had been incorporated into the game by a now-ex-employee.
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
Hook has gone on to explain that multiple Bungie staffers have followed her on social media, so it does paint a more suspicious picture about how this may’ve happened. Meanwhile, Bungie is having to do damage control now and went so far as to remove gameplay footage from its Alpha live stream on Friday. Marathon art director Joseph Cross has been in contact with Hook and is working towards an amicable solution for both. Cross has further said that while there have been hundreds of artists, both internally at Bungie and externally, there’s no excuse for what has happened, and has publicly apologized to Fern for what happened during Friday’s live stream.
Via VGC:
“So to that extent, I want to send my personal apology to 4nt1r34l, whose work was used in this case. I know how unfair this feels, and we’re doing everything we can to make this right. Her work is fantastic, and we clearly share a mutual appreciation for a specific genre of graphic design, and I’m excited to have folded that into our style in general.”
-Joseph Cross, Marathon Art Director
Marathon is planned to release on September 23 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC for $40. Fans of the game and its developer have been expressing concern that, should this incident lead to a release delay, it could be catastrophic for it and Bungie. It’s been reported (via Forbes>IGN) that things are not well at Bungie with employee morale being in a state of “free fall”.
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Discussion (12 replies)
Join Discussion →Bungie has been run by clowns for years now. I could give people a run down of a lot of the shady crap they pulled with Destiny 2, but that would make for a very long post. It would be easier for them to pay the artist for their work rather than scramble to remove everything connected with them. As I understand it, the game's overall art style is basically the same as the person's they stole from.
Not that Marathon was going to be anything other than DOA anyway, but this kind of crap hurts Bungie's already bad reputation.
and it's over, at least for now.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/marathon_update[/URL]
"Peter_Brosdahl, post: 96458, member: 87" wrote:and it's over, at least for now.
"Doubling down on the Marathon Universe"
Why do they always do this and then blame the fans when it fails?
They shouldn't be doubling down they should be scrapping it. Frankly if they had an ounce of self awareness they should've quietly scrapped it when they saw how concord did. I mean how arrogant you have to be to see concord get rejected by the whole gaming population, including the people who pretended to support it on social media, but you continue to work on a game in the same genre and with very similar design language as concord like nothing has happened, expecting a different outcome?
"MadMummy76, post: 96464, member: 1298" wrote:Frankly if they had an ounce of self awareness
Unfortunately, that seems to go out the window more often than not when it comes to greed and the hunt for the ever-elusive live-service cash cow.
"Peter_Brosdahl, post: 96477, member: 87" wrote:Unfortunately, that seems to go out the window more often than not when it comes to greed and the hunt for the ever-elusive live-service cash cow.
I don't think it is explained by greed. Is it greed that makes you follow in the footsteps of something that made negative 300 million?
I call it greed when minimum effort is put into something, and it seems obvious they were trying to salvage with leftovers for profits instead of putting in the time and money to make a distinguishable quality product.
Sunken cost fallacy then? I don't think they've put even minimal effort into changing the design.
Sad since Marathon had a decent legacy to it and it’s getting destroyed like this
Latest update:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://insider-gaming.com/marathon-march-2026-release-date/[/URL]
I'm betting this launch doesn't go well.
A shame, the original Marathon is classic. This is ... not, I predict.
In my eyes they already failed when they decided to make yet another multiplayer online shooter.
"Brian_B, post: 99179, member: 96" wrote:I'm betting this launch doesn't go well.
There is very little chance it will.
Discussion (12 replies)
Join Discussion →Bungie has been run by clowns for years now. I could give people a run down of a lot of the shady crap they pulled with Destiny 2, but that would make for a very long post. It would be easier for them to pay the artist for their work rather than scramble to remove everything connected with them. As I understand it, the game's overall art style is basically the same as the person's they stole from.
Not that Marathon was going to be anything other than DOA anyway, but this kind of crap hurts Bungie's already bad reputation.
and it's over, at least for now.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/marathon_update[/URL]
"Doubling down on the Marathon Universe"
Why do they always do this and then blame the fans when it fails?
They shouldn't be doubling down they should be scrapping it. Frankly if they had an ounce of self awareness they should've quietly scrapped it when they saw how concord did. I mean how arrogant you have to be to see concord get rejected by the whole gaming population, including the people who pretended to support it on social media, but you continue to work on a game in the same genre and with very similar design language as concord like nothing has happened, expecting a different outcome?
Unfortunately, that seems to go out the window more often than not when it comes to greed and the hunt for the ever-elusive live-service cash cow.
I don't think it is explained by greed. Is it greed that makes you follow in the footsteps of something that made negative 300 million?
I call it greed when minimum effort is put into something, and it seems obvious they were trying to salvage with leftovers for profits instead of putting in the time and money to make a distinguishable quality product.
Sunken cost fallacy then? I don't think they've put even minimal effort into changing the design.
Sad since Marathon had a decent legacy to it and it’s getting destroyed like this
Latest update:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://insider-gaming.com/marathon-march-2026-release-date/[/URL]
I'm betting this launch doesn't go well.
A shame, the original Marathon is classic. This is ... not, I predict.
In my eyes they already failed when they decided to make yet another multiplayer online shooter.
There is very little chance it will.