Marathon (Bungie)

If you look at the X post, there seems to be some very specific points being called out that make it likely they did take assets, not just general concepts.

Why would both have the "Aleph Dark space haulage logistics" shit if it wasn't straight up stolen? Or the line of seven distinct icons in a row in the same order?

DickTrickle said:

If you look at the X post

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Ok, that's bad.

Cybsled said:

I haven't seen the accusations, but a lot of these "stolen story" lawsuits end up being complete bullshit because a) its clear the original author stole ideas from elsewhere themselves b) it's Nintendo Lawsuit against Palworld level crap

"Omg, my story has people flying on alien creatures and their game has the same! Clearly they plagiarized my wholly original work I wrote in 2011!!!!"

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Some that i saw are direct lifts, a few id fall under generic enough to be like oh whatever.

mkopec said:

YEah that shit does look pretty bad. I mean its one thing to steal ideas and themes, but entirely another when you blatantly just copy the shit, lol.

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I guess one even still had the artists name on it

well does not look good with that lawsuit going on also.

lol was just coming to see if anyone posted Cross's video

Was Bungie named after the wrong rope?

there is zero chance the game comes out this year

Fadaar said:

there is zero chance the game comes out this year

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Or maybe not at all. Best thing they can do is strike a great deal with AntiReal and publish the details - she gets 5% of every sale or some shit and then they release with half a chance for a profitable game instead of eating the entire dev cost aka Concord 2.0.

The art director Joe Cross and other members of the team were following AntiReal's work for years and years, but the statement on stream was that they think it's only a couple of small decals/assets that were copy+pasted. That is probably technically true, but the style is a direct rip and Cross had to know that. Even if he didn't know when he and a couple art leads were coming up with the general art design/direction, one of the 100+ artists they apparently employ on this title would know and there would be office rumors. They cannot simply pull the assets and release as is, because the copy+paste is out there and the copy+paste supports that concept that the entire style was lifted from AR and should be a slam dunk in court. Especially with the other 3(?) cases Bungie has of direct art theft. Even money someone on the team sent Joe a mesage raising concerns at style theft and will come forward at some point.

Or I suppose they can delete the assets and hope to bury AR in court costs and settle 5 years later. It appears that she could have easily been "bought" out years ago with an actual well paying job (from her comments about not making a living from this art).