This is fourth time a confirmed plagiarism occurred at Bungie in recent years. There is also an ongoing lawsuit over accusation of Red War story theft. This isn’t some lone rogue employee issue. It’s a company culture issue originating from the top. I think Sony needs to step in and clean house to address the systemic problem.
If i do crime and get caught or admit it, I still have to face the law about it. Does bungie?
Don’t use AI it’s theft from the creators.
The " creators "
“Plagiarism exists, therefore a plagiarism machine can’t be wrong!”
lol gtfoh
Like they did so the past few times which still led to this happening again?
Nobody has been able to explain to me how this new game has fucking anything to do with Marathon.
They’re just stripping copper from the walls.
This is just parading a corpse around. Glad I never got into Destiny.
Does it even have Pfhor in it…?
I remember when Bungie made cool stuff like Myth the fallen lords.
Halo too, Bungie is honestly just a totally different studio than it used to be.
I can’t see the company name without thinking about this scene from Red VS Blue
Tucker: “Bungle…”
Church: “That’s an i, you idiot!”
Tucker: “Oh, right! Bingle…”
Church: “BUNGIE!”
It does often seem that Tucker had it right the first time.
TIL that Bungie is releasing a new game.
Although judging by this news and the first sentence on their Steam page being “…Bungie’s team-based extraction shooter.”, maybe it’s a good thing I can’t play their games.
Im so tried of all these multiplayer games, make a goddamn single player campaign, fuck it add in splitscreen or the ability to play the campaign with friends if you have too
“Bungie is making a new game based on Marathon”
Great, I’m in.
“It’s a multi-player extraction shooter”
Nope, I’m out. This smells like a “Prey” situation.
But Prey was actually good.
Prey was sooo good.
Sucks for the people who wanted a continuation of the original tho.
prey 2 was going to be nothing like prey. I’m glad it didn’t happen tbh.
For real, immersive sim fans that haven’t played it are missing out. It probably should’ve had a different name though.
It did at one point, but I think they were forced to change it to Prey at some point in development. It had a “Shock” title to put it in line with System Shock and Bioshock.
I had the same reaction to Marathon as well as the new Black Hawk Down.
The best thing about Marathon is the shortfilm. Watch that. Then ignore the game.
I watched people play the game and was wondering what the hype was all about. The game looked so dull and boring. The outside of the map looled like a game made by a single dev for his indie game. Only yesterday i watched the short film and was loke: oooooooh, i get it, because they lie.
The art director followed Antireal on Twitter.
Stop the bullshit. They knew what they were doing
The art director followed Antireal on Twitter.
If not for this, I would’ve chalked this up to the designs being abstract enough that it’d be feasible for two separate artists to have come up with them independently. The fact that he was following the artist is a bit damning.
It’s a shame, because he’s a fantastic artist, himself, but this is definitely going to soil his reputation, and probably calls into question some of his earlier pieces, as well.
Some of the stuff has the artist’s logo still on it.
I only see the first of the comparison images linked here. The line of identical symbols inside squares is pretty convincing.
The second image contains lines of text copied verbatim, and is undeniable.
More pics are coming out. One of them has the artist’s handle in it. Original art is the yellow to the right. Whoever added it to the game intentionally smudged the name, but left enough of it to be readabale.
https://bsky.app/profile/billain.bsky.social/post/3lpafkzimqc2x
designs being abstract enough
They copied the text and the name of a made up company. That’s so blatant I can’t believe nobody just asked “wait, is that on our lore or something?”
That’s what I don’t get. Presumably there is some lore behind this game (unless they really are that lazy) so why don’t they just use one of the companies that they definitely have for the game
So abstract they contain the artist’s personal logo.
They could just market it as “with Art by Antireal” and give him the commission and fame he deserves…
They copy-pasted text and personal logo.
If you think that’s “abstract enough”, I’m guessing you’re either a plagiarist or an “AI artist”. Or do you want to admit that you didn’t really look at the comparison images?
Or do you want to admit that you didn’t really look at the comparison images?
You’re already like five comments deep into an argument that hasn’t even happened yet, calm down.
Senator, I know Marathon. I served with Marathon. You are no Marathon.
And I served a tour with Pathways Into Darkness.
if i had a nickel for every time bungie stole art i could afford to pay for that art
When you have money and power then get caught doing something, ask for forgiveness and create a awful situation to pay the artist less and throw in that small tiny hint of “no more money later, no royalties, we own everything and you get small check….byeeeeeee” (aka the middle finger)
They’re doing it again! Bungie has fallen far, completely incompetent management.
Is it only the management though? You mean to tell me absolutely none of the artists knew about this, or that literally ONLY ONE “ex-employee” artist knew this was going on among the art team? Do Bungie only have one artist making art assets for textures across various objects, as well as assets they use on their website and in their trailers?
“Ex-employee” is a scapegoat, but I guarantee you there was more than one artist, entirely unrelated to management, that knew this was going on and will happily blame the scapegoat to absolve themselves of their involvement.
It’s such a damn shame, too. Destiny 2 was some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming over the last decade. Absolutely jaw-dropping environments at times, clever encounter designs, the gunplay, so many things to love. And I have no doubt Marathon will be a hell of a thing from what I’ve seen. These people can design a game.
But GODDAMN stop stealing art from people. Upper management has got to be atrocious with all the bullshit they’ve pulled over the years. And you know that bullshit starts at C-suite and rolls downhill.
Just a damn shame.
It’s surprising how few people at the top you need to change in order to change a company culture. One of the companies that I regularly work with has gone from being a nightmare because we could never get information out of them, to a nightmare because of how whiny and demanding they’ve become. That was the result of the CEO changing, that’s it one person and it results in a totally different corporate personality.
Dictatorships be like that. You never hear about these problems with co-ops, just saying…
NGL, it seems really practical that it was intended to be placeholder concept art that someone forgot to go in and replace.
That said, this artist they took so much inspiration from definitely deserves a place in the game’s credits at this point. Whether they actually use his art in game or not.
Placeholder doesn’t need to be anything more than basic featureless textures on cubes, and you should own them completely. If you made your placeholder to look like it fits, you’re asking for it to be forgotten and left in place. Which might not be too bad if it’s finally not too out of place and it’s yours.
Especially in a professional studio, they should know better than using stuff they just “found” as placeholder. To me it’s either terrible incompetence… or worse, they thought nobody would care anyway.
This is incompetence.
I’ve been in and out of games for my entire career. Every place I’ve been has had strict policies on outside art assets. I’ve even seen every new art asset to require a monthly license review to prevent any chance of outside art having slipped in somehow, including any usage of Blender’s example model Suzanne.
This certainly sounds the right way to do this.
But I really wonder about the stuff at bungie being “just” incompetence, because their defence is “weren’t aware of this, just used assets left by a former Bungie employee that’s not here anymore”… And yet the art director had been following the plagiarized artist on twitter this whole time.
And they have an history of “just taking” when they think they can get away with it, as they’ve done with fanart. So, shitty studio culture sounds a definite possibility at that point.
I will say, placeholder SHOULD be more than basic featureless textures on cubes so it can’t make it to a playtest without knowing about it. You know, like this. Placeholder kittens are always distinct, in my book. Plus if something subtly gets through, players will think it’s a hilarious easter egg
Placeholder art should go in the place folder art folder. Then just before release you delete the placeholder folder.
Didn’t they get caught doing this with destiny as well? It makes me wonder if it’s a studio culture thing. You’re 200% right in what they should be doing, but I still am inclined to think this is more likely an incompetence thing than malice.
The fact they keep doing it leads me to believe we’re missing several instances where they’ve gotten away with it
Absolutely. Now that people are paying attention, it’ll be easier to spot.
