Bungie won't show more Marathon gameplay until all the plagiarized content is removed
, by Thibaut
This Friday, Bungie held its weekly livestream dedicated to Marathon. But contrary to its usual practice, the American studio didn't broadcast a single gameplay recording.
During the same livestream, the developers announced that they had made this choice because of the ongoing investigation into the plagiarized artworks affair. Earlier in the week, the designer Fern Hook had accused Bungie of using several of her creations without her authorization. The studio acknowledged the error, which was attributed to a former Bungie artist.
Joseph Cross, artistic director of Marathon, has stated that his teams are currently conducting a thorough review of the game's assets in order to remove any illicit artworks. He also wants to make sure that such an incident does not happen again in the future. Cross also said that he had contacted Fern Hook to apologize and assure him that he would do whatever was necessary.
"We learned that an artist who had worked on Marathon during the early stages of pre-production had borrowed a number of graphic elements from a designer without authorization or acknowledgement, and then placed them on a decal sheet that had been registered in 2020."
"The decal sheet included icons and text elements, which have been integrated into our alpha version. There is absolutely no excuse for this oversight, and we are working and are 100% committed to implementing a review process to ensure that situations like this do not happen again at Bungie."