"The vibes have never been worse"

Bungie's upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is in deep trouble. The studio's official Twitter account for the game had been posting updates almost daily, then went completely silent after a disastrous livestream in May. According to reporting from Paul Tassi, sources inside Bungie describe morale as being "in free fall across all departments." One source said, "The vibes have never been worse." As Asmongold put it: "Absolutely everything is going wrong for Marathon right now."

The plagiarism crisis and a broken stream

The immediate crisis began when it was discovered that Marathon used plagiarized art assets. Bungie acknowledged that one artist who worked on pre-production in 2020 had used unauthorized work from an independent artist called Antireal. The stolen art ended up on a decal sheet, which was then used in production and went undetected. Bungie said it was updating its review process, reaching out to Antireal, and auditing all of that artist's previous work — meaning no new footage could be shown until the audit was complete.