Both will be disappointments and sell bellow expectations. It remains to be seen if they're going to crash and burn as hard as Concord did. I doubt it but you can never say never.

Let's hope it is, if a billion dollar company steals art, they deserve to fail

The company obviously didn’t decide to brazenly steal art. One employee(who was probably working to a deadline and behind) stole some assets and put them on a decal sheet submission that people subsequently used in the game.

Wanting a game to fail and potentially hundreds of people to lose their jobs is pretty disgusting, but I’d expect little more from a one dimensional Sony hater as you have clearly shown yourself to be repeatedly.

Sadly, two people agreed with his post too. There are multiple people that actively want this game to fail, and that was also evident in the failure of concord. In the "Corcord failed" thread people have already started talking about Marathon as well as if it had already released and failed like Concord. The funny thing is, it's failure would be totally inconsequential for Sony, only for Bungie. How can you call yourself a gamer if you want developers to fail? 

Do we want developers (the people, not the studios) be stuck in an environment that limits them? Let's face it: a game studio like Bungie, Bioware, Blizzard and so on (maybe you can think of examples of companies that don't start with B) is mostly a logo. Their past successes are no indication, as the key people that created these successful games might be long gone or they may be limited by new corporate structures that suffocate their talent. Even From Software, once Hidetaka Miyazaki is gone or bund by corporate red tape, then From will not be the same, although the decline might happen slowly.

As an example: Three of the devs of Clair Obscur worked at Ubisoft before. But they couldn't realize the potential that lead to the game there, they had to go from that environment.

Qwark didn't call for developers to fail, he talked about a company. I don't know if Bungie deserve it or not, but to be fair most companies turn into shit-shows over time, preferring revenue over artistic brilliance. If Bungie has to close the developers can find a new gig at a better place or found their own studio. Well maybe not in the overheated american market, that needs correction. But internationally.

I am usually not inclined to wish game studios to go down. But I also don't care much, if they turned to shit. The art stealing controversies (plural, not just one person as the managers try to pin the blame on) at least show an level of desinterest in artistic value, that at this point I wouldn't shed a tear if Bungie goes down. Probably won't happen, not from just one flop. But the developers with real artistic talent that work there, they will be able to find something new. Bigger companies tend to have more employees that are mediocre, these might struggle. But the good developers, they will find something and if they start it themself.

This is not about Sony hate or hating developers. It is about the industry being in a very unhealthy place, driven by market interests and company bureaucrats that drown out the artistic voices. Game companies closing down is an opportunity for the artistic developers to gain the upper hand, as management has to learn that sometimes it is better to let the crazy artist free roam and just collect the revenue than to interfere and try to "optimize" games after market calculations taken from producing and selling cars or refrigerators.

This isn't the first incident of Bungie stealing art. More over, this "one employee" excuse is frankly unbelievable. Was this same "lone employee" responsible for their prior asset theft indicents? Multiple Bungie employees including their lead art director for Marathon follow Antireal. She is the artist who had her work stolen. It wasn't one employee. They didn't even remove Antireal's watermark from the stolen assets. So several employees followed her art for years and none of them recogninzed her watermark. Even if they hadn't seen a specific asset before, they have seen her watermark. This isn't an accident, it's a pattern of behavior. She's a small artist and they clearly thought they could get away with this.

As for the game itself, it had already struck the proverbial iceberg BEFORE the asset theft came to light. Impressions of the game were lukewarm at best. I still don't understand the use of the Marathon IP. Game isn't well known by most and the new title seems to have little in common with it's namesake. Marathon isn't headed for a disaster. It is a disaster. And it's par for the course with Bungie as of late. Sony was viewed to have overpaid for Bungie when people held them in high regard. The acquistion has been a complete and utter failure.

As far as I’m aware no one else at Bungie has even been involved in stolen art incident. The other ones connected to Bungie were all done by people outside the company. One was a Nerf Gun design, and 2 were art assets used in Destiny advertising promotions made by third parties that included fan created Destiny Art that the studio thought was real Destiny art. So talking about previous incidents is pretty disingenuous. 

Your story about how they stole the art on purpose is nonsensical. If you’re stealing art you go out of your way to cover it up, and change things slightly, not one for one steal some assets.

The stolen art (which the entire games art direction was clearly inspired by and the Art Director should have verified since that's his job) really doesn't matter to us as gamers in the end. The game just isn't interesting in its current state. It has a couple of strengths, but the core game just isn't that good. My friends and I hopped off after several hours to see if we would eventually get hooked, and we just didn't. We didn't return to the alpha after that. There's no "it" factor to the game like I previously mentioned.

If the game is going to fail, which is currently pointing to that it is, it's going to be because the game is nothing special and does nothing to steer you away from the competition. Not because some unknown artist (which I don't buy AT ALL that some dev that went rogue for a second and is an excuse no one should buy) stole art assets.

Arc Raiders, which I haven't played yet, looks far more interesting and enjoyable, and the tone online seems to lean that way as well.

It's saddening to think about what could've been if Bungie had made Marathon in the vain of the way they made Halo. Single player story with a multiplayer component. The art direction, lore, and atmosphere in the original Marathon trilogy of games is nowhere to be seen in this reboot, which both were the most memorable things about those games.

The vast majority of the company is comprised of developers though? If the company goes down the all the developers do, and in this economy where Job cuts in the game industry right now are rife there is no guarantee the laid off developers will find new work, even if they are talented. This whole situation is somewhat similar to the Dylan Mulvaney and bud light fiasco. Everyone justified boycotting the company even if it meant the company failing and hundreds losing their jobs, all because of one or two individuals in the marketing department that made the decision to work with Dylan Mulvaney. The company as a whole had nothing to do with it. It's the same thing as this stolen art stuff. It's just people with an axe to grind, looking for an excuse to find something they can turn into a grinder

No, the artwork of a single artist was not the main inspiration for the game. This artstyle has existed for decades. Starting from Designer Republic/Wipeout which was the first big example:

Additionally, there is artwork from the Art Director depicting the style of robots used in Marathon dating back 11 years on his public posts. This is before the artist Antireal existed.

Here is a breakdown of this artstyle’s history:

https://xcancel.com/poellll/status/1923675496740458567#m