Marathon developer Bungie has acknowledged that some of the art featured in the game was stolen from an artist who didn't work on the game, promising a "thorough review" of Marathon's "in-game assets" as a result.
For context, artist Antireal alleged yesterday that Marathon's environments are "covered with assets lifted from poster designs [she] made in 2017", posting a number of examples of areas in which Marathon's art was lifted from her own as proof.
In response to Antireal's allegations, Bungie, posting on the Marathon development team's account, confirmed that "a former Bungie artist included [Antireal's designs] in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game".
In a thread, Bungie says its current art team didn't know about the artwork's theft, and that the studio is "still reviewing how this oversight occurred".
As a result of the stolen artwork's discovery, Bungie says it will now conduct a "thorough review" of Marathon's asset pool, specifically assets created or contributed by the former artist in question (who isn't named, for obvious reasons).
Additionally, Bungie says it will be "implementing stricter checks to document all artist contributions", although I'm honestly pretty shocked those checks weren't in place to begin with and...
