Artist Shocked To Find Her Poster Designs From 2017 In Bungie's Marathon: 'A Major Company Has Deemed It Easier To Pay A Designer To Imitate Or Steal My Work Than To Write Me An Email' [Update]
Artist Shocked To Find Her Poster Designs From 2017 In Bungie's Marathon: 'A Major Company Has Deemed It Easier To Pay A Designer To Imitate Or Steal My Work Than To Write Me An Email' [Update]
The sci-fi shooter's visual design language is one of its most distinctive features
![Artist Shocked To Find Her Poster Designs From 2017 In Bungie's Marathon: 'A Major Company Has Deemed It Easier To Pay A Designer To Imitate Or Steal My Work Than To Write Me An Email' [Update]](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/7d3d5f55-5e21-43c0-9d32-f60aa4c89a9b.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
You're viewing a single thread.
I've lost all respect for Bungie at this point. Their games have been shit for a few years, but this is a really low bar...
Apparently it's a former Bungie artist that included stolen work in internal assets and didn't tell anyone.
For once, it sounds like a genuine "oh f*k", and not corporate excuses. What we can hope is that the actual artist behind the art gets compensated for their work, and that the assets get replaced if they ask for it.
I’m not sure. Looks like these assets make up a large part of the game’s design identity. I doubt they just hand this work to some person and just go with whatever first version they produced. This kind of thing should be iterated on with feedback from relevant stakeholders.
It’s not a good look. It’s sloppy.
I can almost guarantee you that what happened is that Antireal's art was saved to one of the artists' "inspiration" folders, and somewhere between creating an inspo gallery and that artist quitting/getting laid off, the files got merged into a "concept/assets" folder. Likely when going through the laid off artist's hard drives, they found images that they probably assumed were all originals.
Another theory I've considered is that the artist may have known they were about to be laid off, and intentionally merged the folders in secret to sabotage the game. But I feel like that'd be hard to cover your tracks on, so I'm going to apply Hanlon's Razor to this.
I can almost guarantee you that what happened is that Antireal’s art was saved to one of the artists’ “inspiration” folders, and somewhere between creating an inspo gallery and that artist quitting/getting laid off, the files got merged into a “concept/assets” folder. Likely when going through the laid off artist’s hard drives, they found images that they probably assumed were all originals.
I've worked in games for 18 years, and outright theft of assets happens constantly. I worked on a game where an artist took an asset (from a rather well known game) and outright used it, no changes. Another place I worked an artist took an (extremely unique) weapon from an IP and just copied it over.
If you look at the Bungie art it couldn't possibly be an inspo gallery because they are just straight up used with (some) changes made to them. This was absolutely known to have occurred, and wasn't 'an' artist. You can see why they do this because even in the event they're caught, they can blame a former employee, and pay some nominal fee for the actual artists work.
If you look at the Bungie art it couldn't possibly be an inspo gallery because they are just straight up used with (some) changes made to them.
That's why I'm thinking the folders were merged in error. Bungie makes a lot of stupid decisions, but I think "willfully stealing art and assuming nobody would ever find out as we heavily advertise our game to get as many eyes on the product as humanly possible" is too stupid, even for them.
That’s why I’m thinking the folders were merged in error.
This would require so many different people to fuck up it seems pretty unlikely, not to mention they would have to take those images, resize/edit them, put them into the game, and have not one person notice they deviate from the images that were agreed upon. You don't just 'upload someones folder'.
It's not an artist that included her work. It's multiple artists, including the main art director. They followed her and large portions of the art design in the game are based on her work.
except that's literally always the excuse. i don't remember any company coming out and saying "yeah it was a corporate decision to steal designs to cut corners". literally always either a former employee or an employee who has been promptly fired.
It sucks so much. Bungie and Blizzard have fallen so hard.
Who knows if it happened the way they say it happened but it seems like they're saying the right things now anyway.