Deku is reaching on this let it go man

There's a difference between inspiration and copying. Comparing these examples, yeah Marathon comes off as inspired. But comparing to Antireal, they're either practically identical and a lot of the time completely identical as Antireal does have a distinct style. There's some reaching for straws here lol

But like I said, none of this matters in the end if the game isn't good. Which in its current state, it's not. So much so that more content won't solve the problems.

First of all, the job situation is mostly cooked in the US, a situation created by the exact companies that you try to defend so hard. Also as a european I say we need solid unemployment benefits and a strong situation for workers to secure a good situation with employers instead of trying to defend companies that are lead by greedy shitholes that only use the workers as an excuse for managerial failure.

Secondly: none of us gamers has any power to make a company fail. A company does not ever, ever fail because some customers are unhappy and maybe vocal about it. They fail because they fail to sell. So if anyone is to blame for a game not selling it is the fans, not the haters. Most of the haters wouldn't have bought the game anyways. A failure of selling is down to the fans not turning up to buy or the game failing to excite people to turn into fans (or at least somewhat interested customers) in the first place. You only need to look at Hogwarts Legacy: it had loud and vocal opposition, yet the game sold brilliantly.

I don't even think the art theft situation is important for Marathon. Most possible customers don't even know about it. But the real problem for Bungie is, that the game doesn't seem to excite any possible customer base. A game is not failing because any gamer deciding not to buy it, but because many gamers not to decide to buy it in the first place (possibly because they never heard of it). The default state isn't that we gamers buy every game except the ones we hate. The default state is no-buy, until we get convinced that we want it. This step is Bungie currently failing at.

Also: as a customer of games I can decide to buy an expensive triple-A offering or for the same money 5 indie games. Four of the five may turn out shit but even if one is a banger that is worth much more for me than a mediocre AAA title I don't care much about. And I still supported game developers. Even better - in the indie game situation the actual game developers - that you try to convice me you care about - are supported, while in the case of Bungie much, much less of my money ends with developers - a lot stays with managers both on Bungies and Sony's side. The same managers that try to suffocate the creative freedom of said developers with their numbers. So, why should I and why should you?

In the end we customer have X amount of money to go around. If we put that towards indies much more actual developers will be supported, while if we support Triple-A a much bigger porttion of our money ends up with the shareholders and managers. So your argument of supporting the dev rings hollow - I probably do support much more with my support of indies and AA games. If a badly managed big company without any interest in an artistic game goes under I don't really care. Or to put it more concrete: if current Bungie has to close I don't nearly care as much as if current Sandfall Interactive or current Larian would go under.

I don't understand the need of some people to defend big companies and all their corporate bullshit. You don't do it for the developers working there. They are just the shield for the shitty managers that created the situation in the first place.

The ones that are identical are the ones that were on the stolen sheet, that’s why. There is nothing particularly distinct about her artstyle, she developed through a record label for album covers that already used that existing artstyle too. Her aesthetic isn’t even about robots or any of the key things in Marathon. It’s literally some decals that wouldn’t look out of place in a 30 year old wipeout game.

Trying to say she created the art without giving proper respect to the original sources is also pretty poor behaviour for someone apparently sticking up for artists. Anti-real never once claimed they stole her artstyle, just the decals she highlighted. Who to believe, her or internet randoms? 

This is Art by the Marathon Art Director from 11 years ago, before the artist Anti-real existed. So, what is the main building blocks for Marathon? This artwork or a tiny decal on a robot armour that says Darkspace Industries?

If around 10% of PS5 owners purchase the game, it will be successful. Step up to the plate Sony fans and show some love.

Yep, it is up to the fans, no amount of haters can break the wave of PS5 owners wanting that game.

You can't fault Joseph Cross for defending his game. Never knew he posted on VGChartz though.

I believe Cross when he says he wasn't involved but I think that's ultimately irrelevant, the fact is that he is the Art Director and followed this woman for years and somehow didn't notice the similarities? Either you believe he knew and let the asset theft happen (I don't, and Cross is actually a very talented artist) or it was simply gross incompetence, he was the leader, he followed the artist, he oversees all art, it was a failure on his leadership abilities so it's kind of irrelevant whether he was or wasn't involved, there should be consequences on him.

But I also think G2's right that this art theft situation won't matter much to Marathon's success, as sad as it is to say, if Marathon is actually good, the majority of people won't give a shit about this asset theft situation or even won't know about it and Bungie's name alone will guarantee that Marathon isn't anywhere near as big of a failure as Concord, say what you will about them but Bungie is an extremely well known developer responsible for some massive hits, Bungie today is largely failing due to leadership issues and cancelling multiple projects.

Marathon will probably be similar to Halo Infinite, a very strong opening and then a quick loss of players, though Infinite because it had barely any post-launch support, Marathon more-so because the game itself may not be very interesting even at the basic concept level, but Destiny 2 is still extremely popular today and I have absolutely zero interest in that IP and it gets torn to shreds online and yet here we are, Lmao. So we'll see. I don't want Bungie to close though because of a single thieving developer of 600+

The core issue of Bungie's is leadership, it has always been the leadership, it was the leadership through Microsoft's days, it was the leadership through Activision days, it is the leadership now, the entire studio doesn't need a bullet put in it because of twat executives at the top making awful decisions and having talented developers carry them, just fire the damn leadership already!

According to Bloomberg, a Destiny spinoff called "Payback" was cancelled in 2024. According to Forbes, Destiny Mobile and another Destiny PvP spinoff was cancelled. According to IGN, they had a new IP called "Matter" in development, which was cancelled in 2020 and then according to IGN the team repurposed the project into something similar but different, which was also cancelled in 2022. Then we have Gummy Bears, which was in development at Bungie but SIE has now taken over it and moved Bungie employees out of Bungie and onto it.

That's like 5 cancelled projects in 6 years and 1 moved out of the studio. They clearly spread themselves too thin, which has also hurt Destiny 2, despite Destiny 2 being the only thing keeping the studio alive, while Marathon has seemingly been one bad decision after another. And the leadership has been making a bunch of these terrible decisions while still giving themselves huge bonuses.

It is already speculated in Bungie that senior leadership will leave in huge numbers in Summer 2026 because that's when the final pay-outs are from the acquisition and they're clearly trying to ram Marathon out of the door to boost their pay-outs and then leave it for someone else to clean up after they fuck off. Honestly I wish Sony had a way to legally screw these dudes out of their pay-outs, Bungie's leadership just look like a bunch of grifting assholes who conned Sony.

They honestly should have never greenlit half this shit either and just worked on Destiny 3, maintain support for Destiny 2 until then and bring Marathon back more like the original but like Halo with a strong single-player and multiplayer component, Marathon (if Destiny 3 was in development) wouldn't have needed to be the next massive super gigantic 50m+ seller hit, it could have just been a nice (and big still) success on the side, like a lot of Sony's SP IP are, try to harken back to the Halo days and let Destiny IP just bring in the $$$.

Also drinking the koolaid thinking it was one dude and one time. They were caught stealing art on Destiny as well. Nah, they all knew full and well what they were doing and hoped not to get caught. The anon phantom one dude is a scapegoat excuse in a sad attempt to cover their ass.