AI Summary
5 min readMarathon is cooked: Asmongold on Bungie's sinking ship
In a recent livestream, Asmongold delivered a blistering post-mortem of Bungie's upcoming extraction shooter Marathon, declaring the game effectively dead before its full release. Drawing on his own hands-on experience with the closed alpha, multiple documented instances of art theft by the studio, and comparisons to competitors like Embark Studios' Arc Raiders, Asmongold argued that Marathon represents everything wrong with modern AAA game development: trend-chasing, soulless design, and a studio that has lost touch with both its audience and its own creative identity.
A pattern of plagiarism, not isolated mistakes
The livestream centered on a fresh accusation from an artist known as anti-reel, who publicly called out Bungie for lifting their poster designs and using them without permission or payment in Marathon's alpha environments. "The Marathon Alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs I made in 2017," the artist wrote on Twitter, sharing direct visual comparisons. Joseph Cross, Bungie's art director, had followed anti-reel on Twitter for years but never reached out to commission or license the work.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:57) **Paul Tassi Declares Marathon Over** - Asmongold reacts to a critical article by longtime Bungie follower Paul Tassi, who says Bungie's new game Marathon is finished before it has even launched.
- 2 (03:12) **Caught Red-Handed: The Art Plagiarism Allegations** - Asmongold introduces the core scandal: Bungie has been caught lifting art from independent creators without permission, and this is not the first time.
- 3 (03:56) **Personal Playtest: Marathon Fails to Impress** - Asmongold reveals he played Marathon and states with "absolute confidence" that the game will not work.
- 4 (05:37) **A History of Theft: Bungie's Pattern of Plagiarism** - Asmongold documents a multi-year pattern of Bungie stealing art, starting with the *Witch Queen* expansion in 2021 and continuing through 2024.
- 5 (09:49) **Bungie's Own Vaulting Comes Back to Bite Them** - Asmongold explains that Bungie's decision to "vault" (delete) old *Destiny 2* content is now harming them in court.
- 6 (11:19) **Fresh Allegations from Artist Anti-Reel** - Asmongold details the most recent and specific accusation: artist Anti-Reel caught Bungie using their 2017 poster designs as in-game assets in Marathon's Alpha.
- 7 (13:27) **Media Misrepresentation and the Scapegoat Strategy** - Asmongold calls out mainstream media outlets for fabricating quotes from the artist to sensationalize the story.
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Show Notes
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