Even With Marathon’s Success, There’s Still One Thing I Can’t Forgive

The live service title Marathon has been getting many positive reviews, with many fans praising the game’s visuals and core loop of extraction shooting with PvPvE elements. With addictive “one more run” satisfaction tied to missions within Marathon, it’s easy to see why it has gained a good amount of popularity following its launch. However, despite its positive aspects, there’s one glaring flaw to the game’s development that prevents me from jumping in.

With the failure of other live service games like Highguard this year already, the sci-fi aesthetic of Marathon helped it stand out from “unoriginal” concepts in the genre that fell short. The biggest criticism an extraction shooter or live service game can get is that it’s “boring,” with gameplay and visuals helping any title stand out. Marathon is far from boring, but one of the methods it took to achieve a unique appearance came at a cost that almost feels like a step too far.

Most Of Marathon’s Stolen Art Reflects An Unsettling Trend In Game Design

The biggest scandal surrounding Marathon‘s development is how its art was mostly stolen from Fern “4nt1r34l,” or “Anitreal” Hook. Back in May 2025, Antireal accused Bungie of using her artwork as templates for Marathon‘s, adopting many of her works as assets or textures within the game during its initial footage. Investigations proved these claims to be true, with Bungie admitting to the plagiarism from a former employee that included Antireal’s art in a texture sheet eventually used for the game.

This created a ton of criticism for Marathon, especially during a time where criticisms of unoriginality and gen AI plagued discussions surrounding upcoming projects. With continuing issues around the same problems today, it’s worth noting that Antireal did reach some sort of agreement with both Bungie and Sony Interactive at some point before Marathon‘s launch. According to a post on X, Hook shared that the situation had been resolved to their satisfaction, but the whole situation leaves a sour mark on Marathon‘s history.

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No further updates from Hook have been given since the X post, even with the game’s release this year. That being said, there has been another incident with Antireal’s art being stolen again, this time for an Xbox controller. In an era where stolen art is becoming more and more common, to either feed into AI prompts or gain clout on social media, this makes Marathon look a lot worse no matter how much you enjoy its gameplay.

Recent Credit Inclusions Do Little To Take Away The Stain On Marathon’s Development

To their credit, Bungie has listed Antireal in the credits of Marathon, listed as a “Visual Design Consultant” among concept artists and narrative consultants used for the game. Yet, Antireal is listed among freelancers who worked on Marathon, likely people who were contracted to help develop the game and paid for doing so. As far as players are aware, Bungie did not offer Antireal anything for the adoption of her art, or at the very least, any significant recognition beyond a small footnote in the credits.

Although there could have been more given to Antireal from Bungie or Sony, the credits inclusion feels like a reluctant concession rather than an admission of fault. No matter how well-liked the features of Marathon are, it is clear that Bungie has continued to use the art of Antireal with dubious levels of permission. While it would be a tall order to completely rework the game’s art style to not use the plagiarized material, it is baffling that stolen assets were allowed to be used in the first place.

Stolen Artwork & Gen AI In Other Games Makes Marathon’s Actions Even More Unforgivable

The sentiment behind Bungie’s actions toward Antireal makes it seem like they would have never acknowledged the use of stolen art if there wasn’t significant backlash first. Had Antireal’s statements not gained traction, past trends prove that it would be very unlikely for Bungie or Sony to recognize or take action regarding the art’s origin. This reflects an unsettling trend in other games, which have taken to gen AI or stolen works to craft their games without even crediting artists like Bungie did eventually do.

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Other franchises like Halo are gaining controversy for Xbox’s dedication to gen AI as a tool for game development, at various levels of design. Even celebrated studios, like Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Larian Studios, has come under fire for using gen AI to generate art concepts for its upcoming game Divinity. Gen AI uses art fed into its algorithm, which is mostly stolen from talented creators like Antireal without any permission.

All of this makes what happened in Marathon even more disappointing, as it reflects a reaction of multiple companies almost “getting away” with theft through their status as a AAA group. Even though proper credit was given to Antireal, the fact that Bungie and Sony didn’t spend their multitude of resources to recognize and fix internal plagiarism prior to Marathon‘s launch is a mistake that sours the finished product on the back of nearly unaccredited work.

What do you think of Marathon‘s art scandal now that the game has launched? Leave a comment below or join the conversation in the ComicBook Forum!