The artist whose designs were used in Bungie’s Marathon without permission says the dispute ‘has been resolved to my satisfaction’

An artist whose work was used in Bungie’s upcoming Marathon without her permission or knowledge says the situation has now been resolved.

Back in May this year, Scottish artist Fern ‘4nt1r34l’ Hook accused Bungie of taking assets from her previous work and using it in the alpha for Marathon.

Bungie later acknowledged that Hook’s claims were accurate, and claimed that a former staff member was responsible for taking her art.

The developer subsequently pulled all gameplay footage from its following livestream, as it conducted a thorough review process to remove any art from the game that was “inappropriately sourced” and vowed to ensure that the situation doesn’t happen again in the future.

Now, Hook has posted a brief message on her X account, simply stating: “The Marathon art issue has been resolved with Bungie and Sony Interactive Entertainment to my satisfaction.”

It’s not clear what the terms of the resolution were, nor is it known whether Hook’s post on X was one of the conditions of the agreement.

When Bungie initially acknowledged Hook’s work had been used in the game, art director Joseph Cross claimed that the studio had reached out to her to apologise and make sure they “do right” by her, but no specific details were shared on how it planned to do so.

“It came to our attention that an artist who worked on Marathon in the early stages of pre-production took a number of graphic elements from a graphic designer without permission or acknowledgement, and then placed them on a decal sheet that was then checked in in 2020,” Cross said at the time.

“The decal sheet included icon and text elements, which ended up in our alpha build. There’s absolutely no excuse for this oversight, and we are working on and are 100% committed to a review process to ensure that instances like this don’t happen again at Bungie.”

He added: “Personally I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for artists working independently, producing, making a living, doing commercial or fine art. We’ve worked with many of them. It’s one of my favourite parts of the job, to make those connections, create content, and collaborate.

“So to that extent, I want to send my personal apology to 4nt1r34l, whose work was used in this case. I know how unfair this feels, and we’re doing everything we can to make this right. Her work is fantastic, and we clearly share a mutual appreciation for a specific genre of graphic design, and I’m excited to have folded that into our style in general.”