Bungie admits its Marathon alpha included stolen paintings

The brilliant, glitched-out, typography-forward look of Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is one in every of 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 much 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 ok 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 characteristic solely flippantly 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 stored quiet till now as a result of she was suggested to hunt authorized motion. Hook finally determined to put up concerning the concern as a result of she would not “have sufficient time or cash to fly out to the US to pursue an unwinnable courtroom 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 information. The corporate is “conducting a radical overview of [its] in-game property” and has additionally reached out to Hook to “talk about 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 throughout the improvement of Future 2 and its varied expansions.

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