Marathon Discussion - Plagiarism Will Make Me God…

Marathon Discussion

Plagiarism Will Make Me God…

Images From Antireal

Wanted to talk about this situation after all of the current news has come out about it. I figured I wouldn’t be talking about this game again up until I had gotten my hands on the game. And since I didn’t get access to it during the Closed Alpha (not like I could say anything due to it being under NDA) I figured that would be during either launch or sometime after launch. Well unfortunately, news has recently come out about an egregious case of plagiarism happening to a lot of the graphical design work in the game. All of which showing up in the closed alpha. And all of it, (as far as what is known now) is mainly from one artist, Antireal or antire.al on Bluesky and 4nt1r34l on Twitter. The above images show some of the of the instances that she highlighted on her respected social media pages, with them being blatant copy and past work from her portfolio, to in game graphics.

    One of the worst ones for me is this one, it might not show it to well in the game screen shot, but on the right it shows Antireal’s original work, and the a blatant copy on the left, without even caring to change the lettering in the box. It’s clear that whoever copied this particular work truly didn’t care when turning this in. But that leads to the main question, who exactly is responsible for this? Is this mass plagerism from the art team? Or is this the work of only a couple or one person? Well apparently, as stated by Bungie on Twitter, it was the work of a single former employee from Bungie. Now whether this is true or not is debated, especially with several other members of the art team following the artist on Twitter. However, I’m not going to say that this was a way of getting in with the intent to steal this artists work, I’m wanting to hope that they only followed her because Antireal and her work was an inspiration for the art team and portions of the direction for Marathon. So while it is definitely not a good explanation, so far it’s one of the few we have right now.

    If it is true that this was the work of a single former employee, then I really hope they feel ashamed of what they did, not only for stealing work, but in turn fucking over there other fellow developers in the process. Because unfortunately this news has lead to plenty of bad will for Marathon but also the development team. As I imagine there were many devs who didn’t know that this was the case seeing as this was able to make it into a playable closed alpha. And here’s the thing, this is not a new problem that Bungie has faced in the past. While many other studios have similar plagiarism problems, Bungie in particular has had several other instances of this with Destiny 2, mainly plagiarizing fan art which then went into the game through a cutscene. From what I’ve heard, with those stories though, is that Bungie was quick to make right and compensate the artists in question. And I believe these came from outsourcing agents also. But even so, I figured I mention this.

    Especially since this tells me that even after these initial scandal that were on a much smaller scale, shows that they didn’t have anything in place in order to catch any plagiarized work. Which I would figure there would be a heightened effort for quality control after the initial scandals. This tells me that this was a managerial issue, I’m not saying this as a definitive of what happened, but that’s what it seems, especially as more stories come out about how bad management can be for Bungie. Hell this fact alone is why so many people are skeptical about this singular former developer being the cause. They just don’t have the reputation for most people to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    Apart from the twitter response, there was an additional live stream on the Marathon channel where they responded to these allegations. It had Joe Ziegler and Joe Cross and a couple other devs on to talk about this. I’ll give credit to them wanting to address this, but to say this wasn’t a good look would be an understatement. Because unfortunately, they didn’t make clear that this would be investigated or that proper checks will be in place to stop something like again, but it also didn’t confirm that Antireal will be compensated for her stolen work. What that is going to be, I’m not sure, personal I believe they should pay her properly for all of the work as well as apologize to her for this even happening. It didn’t help either that the stream was incredibly awkward, barely worked and the stream chat was constantly spamming, “Plagiarism Will Make Me God.” A spin on the slogan used in advertisements, “Escape Will Make Me God.” It was a terrible impression, and something tells me the devs felt it, because if you watch the stream, you can see the dead, and tired expressions on some of the dev’s faces, Cross especially. It looks like he hasn’t slept, and that stinks…

    So where do we go from here? Or more accurately, where does Bungie go from here? I’m sure there will still be things coming out as time goes on, and discussion are being done at Bungie and most likely with Sony. But safe to say, Bungie’s job has gotten a lot harder now with this coming out, especially if they had any hope of getting people interested in the game that wasn’t just Destiny players. Of course the obvious thing is the Antireal should be paid for this happening to her. The fact that a good chunk of the game’s style was built on her work has definitely earned her that much along with a formal apology. But of course this brings into question on what should happen to Marathon. With me seeing some people saying that they should just cancel it and be done with it.

    My thoughts on that is that is a disgustingly simple conclusion that most likely won’t lead to the solutions that those people think it might. If anything it would most likely cause more harm than good, as this would risk many people’s jobs, many of which weren’t even involved with this situation and were just doing their jobs, and might honestly cause Bungie to go into the red and possibly close should that be the worse case scenario. And of course, no Bungie, means no more Destiny 2, unless they preserve the game somehow or sell the rights to another company.

    Personally, what I think needs to happen is for the game to be delayed, because at this point, it would not be reasonable to meet its September release. Not just to remove all of the plagiarized work, even though that should be the main objective now, especially in the maps that we haven’t seen yet. But also to be able to add more to the game as well, because at first, the most this game had going for it was its art style, so with that in the toilet, and with the gameplay being seeing as mixed by many in the gaming space. Then this would be the chance to fix that. As for when this is delayed is unsure, as obviously you can’t delay it to long as I’m sure management wants the game out, and also you don’t want to compete with GTA VI in May. And it’s likely even with a delay, this would still hurt the studio and still lead to people loosing there jobs, something that has happened to Bungie a lot as of late. But, I think this is the best case scenario, even if they don’t have plans for it, they really should consider it. Because if not, then it really does seem like Sony will be dealing with a second Concord if nothing is done.

    It really is unfortunate to see this stuff happen to a new game coming out. Especially from a studio that I am a fan of. Mainly with Destiny. And after things seemed to be going up with a new expansion to Destiny and the start of its next story, and possibly Destiny Rising getting more news soon This had to come up. I’m glad the artist spoke up, and I obviously still hoping for Edge of Fate to be good, as well as Rising, as I’m sure Bungie and us the fans are really wanting a win with these releases. If Edge of Fate isn’t good and is then followed by Marathon, then this could be dire for the studio. It’s also unfortunate because this is something I obviously don’t want to talk about, as I mainly want to talk about the games that I like or love and to share my opinions on them. But I figured since I talked about Marathon, it would only be right to talk about this stuff and not just ignore it. I can only hope for the best with a situation like this, and hope that we come out on the other end with Bungie able to fix the game, and allow it to be released under better circumstances. And obviously to Antireal, I am sorry this happened to your work from such a big studio. It sucks to have your hard work be taken without an ounce of credit. And I hope with this that you not only get more people to look at your work, but also Bungie is able to compensate you properly for this.

    That’s it for now, a bit fast and loose with this one, I’m aiming for my next post to be more in line with my regular stuff. Have a good day everyone.