Bungie admits its Marathon alpha included stolen paintings

The intense, glitched-out, typography-forward look of Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is one in all its defining options. Because it seems, it is also partially plagiarized, according to posts shared on the official Marathon X account. The announcement comes after artist Fern Hook, who goes by @4nt1r34l on X, initially accused Bungie of utilizing in-game textures that appeared just like her unique paintings on Might 15.

“Bungie is after all not obligated to rent me when making a recreation that pulls overwhelmingly from the identical design language I’ve refined for the final decade,” Hook wrote on X, “however clearly my work was adequate to pillage for concepts and plaster throughout their recreation with out pay or attribution.”

Hook’s posts are pretty damning, figuring out apparent areas in Marathon‘s alpha map that function solely frivolously altered variations of her unique work. She turned conscious of the difficulty when the alpha initially launched in April 2025, according to The Washington Post, however saved quiet till now as a result of she was suggested to hunt authorized motion. Hook in the end determined to submit concerning the problem as a result of she would not “have sufficient time or cash to fly out to the US to pursue an unwinnable court docket case towards Sony.”

Bungie’s assertion claims that “a former Bungie artist” included Hook’s artwork in a texture sheet with out the remainder of the artwork group’s data. The corporate is “conducting an intensive assessment of [its] in-game belongings” and has additionally reached out to Hook to “focus on the difficulty” additional.

As Eurogamer notes, this is not the primary time Bungie has been accused of lifting the work of different artists. The developer was accused of doing the identical factor multiple times in the course of the growth of Future 2 and its numerous expansions.

Because the recreation remains to be in growth, it isn’t clear how or if Bungie will change Marathon to handle Hook’s criticism, however the developer has till September 23 to do it. That is when Marathon is meant to launch on PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox Sequence X/S.