It came to light in 2025 that Bungie had stolen work from artist Antireal and used it in Marathon—and I don’t mean in the “borrowed ideas from” way, I mean in the straight-up “copied and pasted” way. The situation was made doubly awkward because this had happened previously, in Bungie’s other game Destiny 2—and more than once.
Bungie copped to the theft, which it said had actually been committed by an artist who was no longer employed at the studio, and promised a “thorough review” of Marathon’s assets to ensure that nothing else was being used without permission.
Several months later, Antireal said on X that the matter had been resolved to her satisfaction. We still don’t have any details on the deal they arrived at (which presumably involved some cash) and probably never will, but one very cool consequence has come to light following Marathon’s release: Antireal is listed in the game’s credits, conveniently posted on the Bungie website, as a freelance visual design consultant.
In some ways, it might seem like a fairly minor thing: Just tack another name into a very long list of credits, and forget about it. But for a working artist, this is a big deal. It sucks that the whole thing is rooted in stolen work, but an art credit in a major videogame release, and especially one with a visual style as distinct and powerful as Marathon’s, is meaningful. Even if the game tanks (and for the record, I don’t believe it will), years from now people look back on it and say, god damn, that looks good.
Of course, every silver lining has a cloud, and this is no different: On December 24, just a few weeks after saying the matter had been resolved, Antireal discovered her art had been used on a licensed Xbox controller. “It never ends,” she wrote.
