It’s such a damn shame, too. Destiny 2 was some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming over the last decade. Absolutely jaw-dropping environments at times, clever encounter designs, the gunplay, so many things to love. And I have no doubt Marathon will be a hell of a thing from what I’ve seen. These people can design a game.
But GODDAMN stop stealing art from people. Upper management has got to be atrocious with all the bullshit they’ve pulled over the years. And you know that bullshit starts at C-suite and rolls downhill.
It’s surprising how few people at the top you need to change in order to change a company culture. One of the companies that I regularly work with has gone from being a nightmare because we could never get information out of them, to a nightmare because of how whiny and demanding they’ve become. That was the result of the CEO changing, that’s it one person and it results in a totally different corporate personality.
Is it only the management though? You mean to tell me absolutely none of the artists knew about this, or that literally ONLY ONE “ex-employee” artist knew this was going on among the art team? Do Bungie only have one artist making art assets for textures across various objects, as well as assets they use on their website and in their trailers?
“Ex-employee” is a scapegoat, but I guarantee you there was more than one artist, entirely unrelated to management, that knew this was going on and will happily blame the scapegoat to absolve themselves of their involvement.
Is it far fetched to say their art team could be large, but also underpaid and ignored it so the work was done? Not right but sums up my work experience in an entirely unrelated and uncreative field.
Really just devil’s advocate, im curious for any corporate artist opinion
NGL, it seems really practical that it was intended to be placeholder concept art that someone forgot to go in and replace.
That said, this artist they took so much inspiration from definitely deserves a place in the game’s credits at this point. Whether they actually use his art in game or not.
Placeholder doesn’t need to be anything more than basic featureless textures on cubes, and you should own them completely. If you made your placeholder to look like it fits, you’re asking for it to be forgotten and left in place. Which might not be too bad if it’s finally not too out of place and it’s yours.
Especially in a professional studio, they should know better than using stuff they just “found” as placeholder. To me it’s either terrible incompetence… or worse, they thought nobody would care anyway.
Didn’t they get caught doing this with destiny as well? It makes me wonder if it’s a studio culture thing. You’re 200% right in what they should be doing, but I still am inclined to think this is more likely an incompetence thing than malice.
I will say, placeholder SHOULD be more than basic featureless textures on cubes so it can’t make it to a playtest without knowing about it. You know, like this. Placeholder kittens are always distinct, in my book. Plus if something subtly gets through, players will think it’s a hilarious easter egg
I’ve been in and out of games for my entire career. Every place I’ve been has had strict policies on outside art assets. I’ve even seen every new art asset to require a monthly license review to prevent any chance of outside art having slipped in somehow, including any usage of Blender’s example model Suzanne.
But I really wonder about the stuff at bungie being “just” incompetence, because their defence is “weren’t aware of this, just used assets left by a former Bungie employee that’s not here anymore”… And yet the art director had been following the plagiarized artist on twitter this whole time.
And they have an history of “just taking” when they think they can get away with it, as they’ve done with fanart. So, shitty studio culture sounds a definite possibility at that point.
This is fourth time a confirmed plagiarism occurred at Bungie in recent years. There is also an ongoing lawsuit over accusation of Red War story theft. This isn’t some lone rogue employee issue. It’s a company culture issue originating from the top. I think Sony needs to step in and clean house to address the systemic problem.
They just don’t make memes like they used to, and none of us can just run in without fearing the wrath of strangers. The folks who take games too seriously won.
Maybe not everywhere, but multiplayer games for sure have more serious elements to them than I ever thought.
In a way, this is what I wanted back in the 90s when so few people understood the potential of video games as a serious art form.
In a way, this is what I wanted back in the 90s when so few people understood the potential of video games as a serious art form.
Same, but definitely not for competitive multiplayer games. That’s the antithesis of the direction gaming should go in.
Instead, we should’ve moved more towards co-op. Gamers would be happier and healthier, which is why it was decided they should not appreciate it.
I genuinely feel bad for all the people getting suckered into wasting hundreds of hours in a game like fortshit just because it’s free and their loser friends got suckered into playing it, too. They have no idea what’s happening around them. If they ever realize it, it will likely be too late.
Man, reading that old 2005 PC Gamer article really brings me back to older, better and happier times of gaming journalism too. It even mentions the bundled DVD with demos, mods and goodies you’d get each month. Those really were the days.
Sure but… I’m subscribed to Humble Monthly. So instead of getting a CD with a magazine containing a bunch of demos, I get a bunch of keys for full games. A lot of them pretty neat indies.
If not for this, I would've chalked this up to the designs being abstract enough that it'd be feasible for two separate artists to have come up with them independently. The fact that he was following the artist is a bit damning.
It's a shame, because he's a fantastic artist, himself, but this is definitely going to soil his reputation, and probably calls into question some of his earlier pieces, as well.
That’s what I don’t get. Presumably there is some lore behind this game (unless they really are that lazy) so why don’t they just use one of the companies that they definitely have for the game
If you think that’s “abstract enough”, I’m guessing you’re either a plagiarist or an “AI artist”. Or do you want to admit that you didn’t really look at the comparison images?
More pics are coming out. One of them has the artist’s handle in it. Original art is the yellow to the right. Whoever added it to the game intentionally smudged the name, but left enough of it to be readabale.
Yeah, often learning anything more than the meme itself is that way, if only because you often find out about the rather sad route many of those early viral meme people went down.
pcgamer.com
Aktywne