Marathon Art Director Communicates on Behalf of Bungie Regarding Plagiarized Art Work
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- Bungie held a developer livestream event where representatives communicated news regarding Marathon.
- The livestream began with acknowledgement of plagiarized works – Bungie is committed to doing right to the original artist.
- Joe Cross, art director for Marathon, talked on behalf of Bungie.
During a Twitch developer livestream event for Marathon, Bungie once again confirmed that one of their designers had taken from N2, a graphic artist who also goes by Antireal. Joe Cross, art director for Marathon, talked on behalf of Bungie.
“There is absolutely no excuse for this oversight, and we are working on and 100% committed to a review process to ensure instances like this don’t happen again on Marathon or at Bungie,” Joe Cross shared.
“A few of the things that we’ve done over the last 24 hours are as follows: we’ve reached out to Antireal (N2 on x), the artist in question, and followed up to ensure that we do right with this artist.
“We are auditing all the internal works of the internal artist, including environment decals that are already in the build, which is part of the reason why we’re delaying some of the content we planned for today, and we’re committed to removing anything that is questionably or inappropriately sourced.”
Cross then goes on to state that Bungie’s external partners were not involved in the situation, and that he would like to personally apologize to the artist.
This is not the first time Bungie has been in hot waters for plagiarizing art – Eurogamer reports that Bungie saw similar allegations for Destiny 2’s artwork. Marathon is an extraction shooter releasing on Sept. 23, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. The Marathon closed alpha testing began on April 23 and concluded in early May.
