Video Game Studio Bungie Accused of Plagiarism… Again

On April 12, video game studio Bungie announced a closed alpha for its upcoming game, Marathon. The highly anticipated multiplayer shooter with science fiction themes is slated for a September release.

The alpha began on April 23 and ran into early May. However, the response to the alpha has been relatively tepid. Reviewers note that it shares many similarities with other games but may also be too different from Bungie’s better-known Destiny games.

However, those weren’t the only similarities that drew attention. On May 15, artist Fern Hook, who uses the pseudonym ANTIREAL, published on X (formerly Twitter) that the closed alpha used assets copied from her poster designs.

the Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs i made in 2017.@Bungie @josephacross pic.twitter.com/0Csbo48Jgb

— N² (@4nt1r34l) May 15, 2025

The copying is incredibly obvious, even copying an easter egg that Hook placed in her work.

this is genuinely insane man they straight up took yo shit pic.twitter.com/B9u6XQ1IqI

— •: (@1066_2002) May 16, 2025

Bungie responded to the allegations the same day. In a post on X, they said they “immediately investigated” the allegations and found that the copying was done by a former Bungie employee who had not been with the company since 2020.

They also said they have contacted Hook and are “committed to doing right by the artist.”

According to a report by Forbes, the incident has also prompted an audit of all of the game’s assets. However, perhaps more importantly, it’s also sent company morale into a “free-fall” and concern that alpha may result in a delayed release.

But this isn’t Bungie’s first encounter with plagiarism. It faced similar allegations just nine months ago and multiple before that.

Nerf or Nothing

In September 2024, the company was at something of a high point. Their hit game Destiny 2 was celebrating its tenth anniversary. Part of that celebration was collaborating with Hasbro to release a line of Destiny 2-themed Nerf guns.

However, one of those guns was based on a work by X user Tofu_Rabbit, who created a commissioned version in 2015. As with this story, Bungie quickly contacted Tofu_Rabbit to resolve the issue and compensate them for their work.

In June 2023, Bungie was accused of plagiarizing fan art for the Season of the Deep cutscene. Once again, Bungie acknowledged the issue and contacted the original artist to obtain permission to use the work.

Before that, in September 2021, the company was accused of plagiarizing another fan artist, X user relay315, in a trailer for the Watch Queen campaign.

This represents four significant plagiarism scandals in less than five years. Though Bungie’s issues are easy to compare with Wizards of the Coast’s (WoTC) recurring problems, there is one key difference: most of WoTC’s issues involved contracted artists, not employees.

While that doesn’t excuse WoTC for their missteps, it means Bungie’s issues are wholly internal. They should be much easier to address, though clearly Bungie has failed to do so.

To make matters even worse, this scandal could have easily gone unnoticed if it weren’t for one simple change before the alpha’s launch.

A Scandal Nearly Missed

As bad and embarrassing as this is for Bungie, it could have been much worse.

In the weeks before the alpha, Bungie originally required that all participants sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). This would have prevented the public from seeing footage and images from the alpha.

The company rescinded the requirement days before launch, allowing users to screenshot, video and stream the game.

Without that, it’s unlikely that this would have been detected. Though Hook did not say how she discovered the plagiarism, the allegations came over a week after the alpha closed. Other users have found additional issues since.

If Bungie had adhered to the NDA requirement, they might never have learned about this. That would have allowed these issues to survive deeper into development, possibly even reaching the release, which would have been even worse for the game and the company.

Right now, they have plenty of time to address the issue and let the backlash calm down before the game’s release. It won’t be easy, but Bungie at least has a chance.

If this had come out during the beta tests or after launch, it would have been worse for Bungie and Marathon.

Removing the NDA requirement may have saved the company from a much bigger headache down the road.

Despite that, Bungie still has a bumpy road ahead. To make matters worse, there’s no clear path forward.

What Bungie Needs to Do

Bungie clearly has a plagiarism problem. These issues have not spilled over into copyright infringement lawsuits, but that’s because they have copied mainly from fan creations. Litigation was never likely.

To make matters worse, if we trust Bungie’s explanation, the problem goes back to at least 2020. This isn’t a new problem for Bungie and seems endemic in their company.

So what should Bungie do? Bungie said they are performing “a thorough review of our in-game assets.” This audit will focus heavily on the unnamed employee whose work is responsible for this issue.

But that’s likely not enough. Bungie, like most video game developers, has a pool of assets it pulls from. This means that employees who haven’t been with the company for years can see their assets used in a new game.

Bungie needs to audit that pool as well.

This would likely be a mammoth task. It may even be impossible. However, without that audit, issues in that pool can crop up in later releases. In short, the cycle could repeat even without any new copying.

If this were a one-off case, it would be easy to dismiss it. But this is Bungie’s fourth plagiarism scandal in under five years. It’s no longer a mistake or an acute problem; it’s a chronic condition.

Bungie needs to treat it as such. Otherwise, we’ll likely find ourselves back here again sooner rather than later.

Bottom Line

Bungie has a problem. While this incident is embarrassing and may lead (in part) to a delay in Marathon’s release, it’s not a significant problem by itself.

However, a pattern emerges when you consider the other plagiarism scandals. Bungie has a significant issue here. Unfortunately, fixing such an issue is far more difficult than preventing it.

To be clear, Bungie has done a lot of things right. They’ve worked to make things right with the original artists in each case. They’ve also publicly acknowledged the issue and apologized for their missteps.

But actions speak louder than words. The fact that this keeps happening to Bungie is deeply troubling. While they’ve responded well to the plagiarism stories as they’ve come up, Bungie has failed to prevent them from happening in the first place.

But that may be impossible. Given the company’s size and assets, it may simply be too late. While Bungie can correct course moving forward, its past will continue to haunt it.

This is a powerful example of why companies must have and enforce strong anti-plagiarism policies from day one. With plagiarism, an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of cure.

As Bungie is learning, the cure may be so cumbersome that it is impractical to take. This means the ghost of plagiarism may linger around Bungie for many years to come.