My previous post on this matter was removed for breaking a rule, so I'm posting again for anyone who missed the news earlier.
Excerpt mentioning Bungie's response from the article :
Bungie responded within hours. Though it did not publicly apologize, it said it had now launched an investigation, attributing the "issue" to a former Bungie artist, and reached out to the artist concerned.
"We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game," the team said in a statement. "This issue was unknown by our existing art team, and we are still reviewing how this oversight occurred.
"We take matters like this very seriously. We have reached out to [the artist] to discuss this issue and are committed to do right by the artist. As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission.
"To prevent similar issues in the future, we are conducting a thorough review of our in-game assets, specifically those done by the former Bungie artist, and implementing stricter checks to document all artist contributions. We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention."
25 Comments
Seems like a reasonable explanation and response. One of their artists stole work and used it as their own, so they’re figuring out how that happened and how to stop it in the future.
Oh man that art director is going to get in shit lol
Can’t wait for them to investigate internally and find no faults like the last three or four times they’ve been caught stealing artwork. Probably while continuing to use the art and not compensating the artist.
It still baffles me that a company like Bungie can fall off so bad after making games as good a the first 3 Halos
>Found to Have Used Work From an Uncredited Artist
Awfully nice of IGN to frame it that way.
“oh no I did something wrong, let me investigate myself” suuuure
but anyway I like to think an employee stole the art, presented it to the art director and then the director was praised for this amazing new art they just “created” and now, they gonna trace it back to the employee and hopefully shit on the art director as well
This seems easy, do a reverse image search lol.
Don’t worry, they’re replacing the stolen art with AI art!
Yeah… Completely unknown and unnoticed despite the art director following said artist on Twitter.
A complete mystery.
Cancelling that failure now would be faster and cost less money.
It’s not gonna do great, no matter what.
>As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission.
THEN WHY DO YOU KEEP FUCKING DOING IT????
The tone deafness from Bungie is absurd at this point. I could understand if this mistake happened once, maybe twice, but this is literally the fourth time it’s happened.
IGN would know. They have a lot of experience when it comes to getting busted for plagiarism
When watching reviews of the beta, the only consistent praise I saw was on the unique art direction. Figures Bungie ganked it from someone.
I dream of times, when big companies will experience consequences equal to the ones experienced by individual people doing similar wrongdoings. You steal something and get caugt? Jail. Company steals something and gets caught? Oopsie.
“used work from uncredited artist” = stole work and tried to pass it off as their own
Bungie made Marathon in 1998 and its was great. I hope this is just a remaster.
“We investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong”
Clothing companies do the same shit very time they are found to use child labour. Then 5 years later same thing again
The only reason they are acting so prompt is because of the red war lawsuit
Bungie fell from grace long time ago, I hope this game flops
Ya’d think they’d stop doing this shit – I mean, at least the AI morons have an excuse
They’re morons and every AI service out there is slathered with inbreeding caused by AI’s feeding on the material produced by other AIs
But this is a multi-billion dollar Sony subsidiary
Even allowing for multi-departmental bureaucracy – basic management shouldn’t make it *that hard* to avoid this *repeated* fuckup…
“You can’t steal an art style” is the boots-to-the-ground buzz term over in their echo chamber.
It’s funny how gamers try to paint themselves as progressive until whatever piece of media or organisation they’ve erected their flag upon is in the firing line for doing something terrible.
This individual was stolen from. Whether it was one logo, one poster or whatever (it seems a fair bit more in this instance). A company that was recently bought for $3.6 billion, releases paid content updates yearly on their other game and loads it up to the eyeballs with MTX on the side stole artwork from someone who, by their own admission, struggles to make ends meet. That isn’t even to mention them being caught doing this multiple times in the past. But still people will find a way to dilute that in order to continue consuming from their heroes with as little criticism as possible.
Damn. Maybe they should stop outsourcing so much then.
Oh wait, it brings costs down so pete can get another car.
>We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game
nothing was “ultimately used in-game,” the game isn’t out yet. your current build isn’t the game, it’s a draft.
I’m not defending Bungie in any way, because this definitely sucks for the artist. I am wondering though, how would you even go about policing this sort of thing? I assume (and it may be a bad assumption) that they try their best with hiring and hope artists won’t steal/use AI that might rip off other artists based on whatever trained learning models/references it used.. but other than dealing with this on a case-by-case basis, how would they avoid this entirely? I’m sure Bungie has a lot of employees. Is there some kind of system you can feed your art assets through to check if it’s too similar to other known/published art? I’m genuinely curious.
all this has highlighted a bigger industry-wide problem to me, in that instead of just asking an artist who makes art you like it they’d like to work with you, you instead send their portfolio to cheap outsourced artists and ask them to replicate it. that feels damn messed up to me, and i am glad it is rightfully biting them in the ass