Bungie Faces Plagiarism Allegations as Former Employee Takes the Blame for Marathons Design Issues

On May 15, 2025, independent artist Fern Hook, who goes by the alias Antireal, accused the studio Bungie of utilizing her original designs in the upcoming game Marathon without her permission.

According to the artist, components of her 2017 work were either entirely duplicated or used with minimal modifications in the game’s visual materials. Hook further claimed that several Bungie artists had followed her on social media for years, indicating that they were aware of her artwork.

Bungie acknowledged that a former employee incorporated these designs without the company’s knowledge. Responding to the allegations, Bungie stated they reached out to Antireal to discuss the situation and are now committed to conducting a thorough review of all game assets to ascertain their origins. Additionally, the studio plans to implement more stringent documentation procedures for crediting all artists’ contributions to avoid similar incidents in the future.

A representative of the company noted that Bungie values the creativity and dedication of all artists involved in the studio’s game development and strives to treat them fairly.

In light of the situation, the studio emphasized their commitment to a detailed review of their in-game assets, particularly those created by the departed artist, and is instituting stricter protocols to ensure transparency regarding all artist contributions.

This is not the first instance of Bungie facing accusations of improper appropriation of ideas. Previously, artist Julian Faylona claimed that his artwork was used in a cutscene of Destiny 2 without consent. While Bungie promised to compensate him for the use of his materials, Faylona reported that a year later, he had still not received anything.

Furthermore, in October 2024, writer Kelsey Martineau sued Bungie, asserting that the Red War storyline in Destiny 2 included elements similar to his works published in 2013 and 2014. Currently, the Red War is no longer available in the game.

Marathon is set to launch on September 23 on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series, featuring full Russian localization.