When even the establishment mainstream journos turn on the game.... Not good
Marathon launches September 23 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC)
- Thread starter JORMBO
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Thread: Marathon launches September 23 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC)
Arc Raiders is eating their lunch. I think AC broke 17k on steam alone.
Wild to see the AI in marathon compared to Arc Raiders.
How can you work on a game with that level of exposure and bet on the OG artist not finding out?
Yeah it's pretty bonkers.
I thought Joseph Cross was the one behind everything, but he's legit just ripped this dude off wholesale. Dudes Tumblr account is straight up dope as fuck full of top end graphic art going back years
@antireal
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Even found the posters he is referring to.
Asmonius
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Borderlands was originally supposed to have a generic military art style.
But then Gearbox hired the artist who made this short. Before he even did any work on the game, they stole his art style and then cut him loose and never looked back. Even the intro to Borderlands 1 is basically straight ripped from Codehunters.
SirKicksalot
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They're a small indie studio. You can't expect them to have the manpower to monitor and double check what every single person on the team is doing.
posted in the comments, but its absolutely true
This idea that it's some rogue former employee is complete BS. Apparently a number of their Art team, including the Art Director have followed their account for years.
Honestly it's pretty disappointing. esp given it seems like they are trying to play it off as an 'oopsie' versus what it really is, which is outright asset theft.
They need to pay them out.
It's baffling. Basically the whole aesthetic has been blatantly and directly stolen. Like WTF. Guess they were to busy implementing BLM fists and LGBTQIA+ flags into Destiny.
It's another result of their DEI hiring practices, spam the team with people based on diversity quotas and the focus shifts away from being professionals to being well paid activists that happen to make games. This is deeply unprofessional and NOT something that just so happens. There are reviews, processes, approvals, legal checking stuff etc. This isn't some small indie project.
This is freaking hilarious to me because basically the only thing I liked about the game, the aesthetic, didn't even come from the studio itself. I really do try to be objective, even when it's a studio that has gone woke or has fallen off in other ways, when I critique a game, so this is sort of vindicating to me in this instance where plenty of other aspects seemed retarded, like the butt ugly character designs etc. even though I liked the artstyle as a whole.
Sadly there's a trend where if a studio has shown any signs of advertising or propping up identity politics or virtue signaling, you can pretty much safely bet that something about their project will end in disaster these days. It's ironic to me that the left goes on and on about how they are the majority of higher education, when they've shown over and over again how creatively bankrupt they are in games and cinema as of late.
All they had to do was reach out and contact the Artist once they decided they liked the vibe and either commission them or bring them in as an employee, instead this shitshow. The reputational damage on this is never going away no matter how much they try and right this now.
Holy shit. Story made the Washington Post.
Kvally
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900 employees isn't an indie studio. Not to mention, it's a PlayStation Studio.
Kvally
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DonDonDonPata
Bridge Burn Man
This is a banner example of how the majority of big studios lack any creativity whatsoever.
Its the normal problem of too many voices in a space. Its incredibly difficult to cut through the noise (and politics) and make daring decisions. Big studio games are often committee designed and take into account "user research data" (<-- which isnt worth the paper its printed on). "Good enough" becomes Good enough and the pursuit of greatness is abandoned.
Hardensoul
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There's more. Read the thread. They need to fire Joseph Cross the Art Director.
It's becoming very clear why they threw Jim Ryan out the door of the moving train.
He really pushed every resource into the same live service basket and it completely flopped and fell on its face. Sony is doing crazy well with their gaming division, but this was a preventable loss of billions of dollars. And now we have an entire lost generation where Sony's best software creators haven't even released a real PS5 game yet, 5 years in.
I think to be fair, this almost certainly feels like it is a case of Joseph Cross, the principal Art Director, being at fault here. When you look at the Graphics work of Fenn and the Videos of Billian from Antireal, and then at Marathon and you have to ask 'Where is the Bungie in all of this? '
Bar the Character models, the entire visual identity of the game feels like it has just been lifted wholesale from them.
Possibly. But the whole game looks like something Sony could have built from the ground up without Bungie, for 1% of that money.
In an age where AI can quickly generate textures and all styles you want, directly and blatantly copying someone else's art is just super bizarre.
Polden
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Bungie is going to be making DLC for Naughty Dog after this game.
It's too soon for anything like that. The Statement by Bungie is really just a cover for 'We are investigating'. I suspect Sony will send some legal in and possibly an independent Art Director to basically go over things. They'll want to assess the extent of any plagiarism, and review whatever Visual Design Bible Bungie have on the project and the references within it as well as interview all the available Art Department members who have worked on the project, past and present.
It's pretty much a slam dunk if the evidence presented is to be believed that Bungie copied their artwork, so they'd have reached out to Antireal to let them know they are looking into it and will follow up later once their investigation is complete.
Beyond some form of financial settlement, I expect they'll get accreditation in the game, % royalties for any merch/book sales and some Marathon marketing commissions out of it (Good for Sony/good for them).
I expect Joseph Cross will be fired by Bungie, as this all happened under him.
However, I wouldn't expect anything to happen overnight, not until this has been gone over fully, and they are able to assess just how bad this is.
Have to say though, you look at the Antireal Archive and you can't see where Antireal ends and Marathon begins.
Didn't catch the Stream, but you could tell the Franchise Art Director on the right absolutely did not want to be there whatsoever.
skeem
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There is so going to be a massive lawsuit on this game, which already looks like it's going to struggle as it is. Need to pay this guy off and put black samurai in immediately to regain the press' favor, STAT!
Nah. AI doesn't output exact copies of things, it instead creates an approximation of based on data sets.
So for instance I just fed ChatGPT 5 of Antireals images (click to enbiggen): -
Then told it to generate an image in a similar Style: -
It's far from a perfect copy, more vaguely aping the look/Vibe. It's never going to exactly output an existing image, versus generate an approximation.
With the examples shown in the screenshots by Antireal from the ingame footage of Marathon, those decals are straight one for one rips of her artwork. Bungie can't even deny it.