By Public Service Associate Paul
Buckle in, there’s a history lesson coming, but I promise it’s going somewhere…
It’s May 1991, thousands of American troops are preparing to return from deployment in the Gulf War, the Queen of England visits Congress for the first time, and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System is readying to hit shelves. Meanwhile, following his graduation from the University of Chicago, Alex Seropian founded his own gaming company named Bungie Software.
Bungie Software’s first commercial release was a topical little title called Operation Desert Storm, a top down tank shooter for Mac OS, which sold around 2,500 copies that Alex assembled and shipped out of his bedroom. Bungie Software continues development for Mac devices to avoid the highly competitive PC market and next releases Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete in 1992 with the help of an additional developer and former classmate.
Following the release of Minotaur in 1992, Bungie Software picked up a third team member with a specialization in graphics and they set to work on 1993’s Pathways into Darkness, the first three-dimensional texture mapped game on the Mac. This impressive tech being showcased on the Mac for the first time made Pathways into Darkness Bungie Software’s first commercial success selling more than 20,000 copies. Now with a reasonably successful game under their belt, Bungie Software was doubling in size to a staff 6 and gearing up for a sequel to their most successful Pathways into Darkness. Shortly into development however, it became apparent that the scope of this new project was much larger than a sequel, and it deserved to be turned into its own project entirely and received the title Marathon.
Marathon released in December 1994 to near universal critical acclaim. During a Mac Games Interview with Tuncer Deniz in 1995, Alex Seropian stated that “the customer demand for Marathon is ten-fold than it was for Pathways” which led to supply shortages of the game. While not too different mechanically from other Doom-like shooters of the time, Marathon differentiated itself by having a detailed, complex plot that is fundamental to gameplay and player advancement. Computer terminals placed in the walls of the game serve as the primary means by which the game’s narrative is conveyed. The player accesses these terminals to interface with the artificial intelligences of the Marathon, who provide information regarding the player’s current objective and narrative. This deviated greatly from the largely linear shooters of the time that would funnel players through hallways with enemies until they reach the point that transports them to the next series of hallways with enemies. And not only did Marathon have an acclaimed story with engaging first-person shooter gameplay but also award-winning competitive multiplayer. This combination of gameplay, narrative and multiplayer catapulted Marathon, resulting in over 100,000 games shipped in a year and a handful of sequels released over the next few years. Marathon was so influential on the gaming space that in 2012 Time Magazine named it one of the top 100 games of all time.
Following a few years spent on the Marathon Trilogy, Bungie Software released a tactical management game in 1997 titled Myth: The Fallen Lords, which was another critical success. Different from any of their other releases however, Myth: The Fallen Lords was a cross platform release that also launched on Microsoft Windows, not exclusively Mac. This wider install base led Myth to overtake Marathon in sales fueling a massive period of growth where Bungie Software would not only move to a bigger Chicago office but also open a second studio in San Jose California named Bungie West.
Now a real player in the burgeoning gaming industry, Bungie Software took the stage at 1999’s Macworld Expo with, then interim CEO, Steve Jobs to announce to the world a new third person shooter for Windows and Mac titled Halo: Combat Evolved. Advertising no levels or breaks in gameplay, Halo planned to give players complete freedom of movement over open terrain. Players were to expect vast outdoor vistas, complete with flora, fauna, weather and celestial events, that were complemented with indoor environments of comparable detail and complexity. A universal physics model and persistent objects were to make events in this world utterly convincing. In this open environment, gameplay would not be linear but would unfold in response to the player’s actions.
Following this historic keynote announcement, Microsoft began the steps necessary and in 2000, announced that they had acquired the studio known now as Bungie. This acquisition resulted in a massive design shift for the already announced Halo: Combat Evolved leading the title to drop both its PC and Mac target audience in place of the rapidly approaching Xbox. And the rest is likely a history you know or at least are vaguely aware of. Bungie reworks Halo from a 3rd person action game to a 1st person sci-fi epic that launches with the Xbox in 2001 selling over 6.5 million copies and becoming the tentpole franchise of the Xbox consoles until even today. With a more successful Halo 2 releasing in 2004 and the console generation defining Halo 3 in 2007, Bungie, now basically a household name, were on top of the world. Shortly after the record breaking release of Halo 3, Bungie announced that they would be splitting off from parent company Microsoft and will now be their own company, Bungie LLC, agreeing to a deal that left Microsoft the IP rights for Halo, but that Bungie would stay on for further development of the Halo franchise which lasted for the release of Bungie’s next and final 2 Halo titles, that being 2009’s Halo 3: ODST (which is my personal favorite in the franchise) and 2010’s Halo Reach.
Following the release of Halo Reach Bungie is among one of the most acclaimed and respected development studios in the world, with nearly 2 decades of critical successes and now back under their own direction, it was time to start work on a new IP that they would own, unlike Halo that they had to leave behind with Microsoft. For this, Bungie leaves Microsoft Game Studios and becomes Bungie, LLC to make a publishing deal with Activision Blizzard guaranteeing that for 10 years Activision would publish and distribute Bungie’s games and that whatever new IP Bungie creates would be retained by Bungie following the partnership. Bungie entered a quiet period during development of their new game “Project Tiger” that features a multiplayer “shared-world” environment with elements of role-playing games.
This title would turn out to be 2014’s Destiny. While Destiny wasn’t received as well by gamers as their last foray into the Halo universe due to missing some of the marks regarding its massive multiplayer story components, the game was widely acknowledged for having competitive multiplayer that allowed Bungie’s expertise in map design and game balance to shine. By the end of the game’s first year it had accrued a player count of 20 million and by all means was a success regardless of its shortcomings. This of course, would lead Bungie to maintain support for Destiny, releasing expansions and content updates to keep the player base engaged until 2017 when the inevitable release of a Destiny sequel would arrive.
Now you may have noticed that a lot of time has passed since it was just 2 people making Minotaur in their bedrooms, and in that time the gaming industry has changed immensely. Gone are the days of a games release and tracking its units sold as a measure of its success. Now games are a service that need constant support with content updates and is measured by active player count. It also needs to be full of microtransactions so that the publisher can maintain a constant revenue stream because of course, if the investors aren’t happy with their return on investment, the studio gets downsized, and the devs get put on a tighter leash by the publisher.
Enter Destiny 2, which received praise for improving many of the detractors from its predecessor, without altering the formula that the community already found successful. The smooth and precise gunplay that Bungie is known for with top of the industry visuals and now with a compelling and complete narrative titled The Red War. But the industry has shifted and selling base games and expansion packs multiple times a year for several years is no longer the most successful model. Following a back and forth with their publisher Activision, Bungie decided to terminate the 10 year contract signed in 2010 ahead of schedule and purchase their publishing rights back from Activision Blizzard allowing them to control not only the IP, but also the distribution of their title which is now largely digital.
Having acquired their publishing rights, Bungie shifts the purchase model of Destiny 2 from a full price game, to a free to play title distributed digitally, so now anyone with internet access can get on and play for free. During this period, Bungie is still widely respected in the industry and known for innovative experiences. From Halo: Combat Evolved and its console defining gameplay all the way to Destiny, one of the first hugely successful and longest running console live service games in memory. This apparent expertise in the live service field is what leads us to the first of the crumbling pillars in Bungie’s foundation, and it all starts with Sony.
Its now 2021, and Sony is falling behind. Not in public sentiment but in their coffers. Playstation is known for its impeccable single player narrative driven action games. Uncharted, The Last of Us, God of War, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and the list goes on and on. These titles have harbored immense goodwill with the gaming community but all of the games share one glaring issue in Sony’s eyes, and that is they are all under-monetized. How can one sell skins and consumable packs to a person for $4.99 to $14.99 a piece or more that is playing a game by themself? And in a game that contains all of its content already at release instead of over periodic releases? Microsoft just bought all of Zenimax which net them massive IP’s like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Prey and more and is in talks to also buy Activision Blizzard to acquire the juggernaut Call of Duty.
So like any reasonable multi-billion dollar organization, if you don’t have the skills you need, just go buy it from someone who does. As a result, in January 2022 Sony announced that they had acquired Bungie for 3.6 billion dollars. Following Bungie and their adamance to not allow another Publisher to own their IP, many questioned what the acquisition would mean for Bungie. However Sony assured that Bungie wasn’t being added to the Playstation Studios lineup and that they would remain independent to continue work on Destiny 2 expansions, but their main interest was using Bungie as an expert in the field to help Sony deliver its own slew of live service games to compete with the likes of the well established Fortnight and Call of Duty.
Literal days after the acquisition was announced, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said during an investors call, “Through close collaboration with Bungie and the PlayStation Studios, we aim to launch more than 10 live service games by the fiscal year ending March 31 2026”. One thing that Sony, and many others (that we just aren’t discussing today) failed to realize is that the live service bubble was only getting as big as it had with help from COVID lockdowns occurring at the time. Investors and corporations alike however saw the promise of revenue through the live service boom while everyone was locked away at home and thought they could get in on the ground floor.
Unfortunately in the video game industry if you are responding to trends, your game will likely release after the trend has passed. By the time studios are capable of noticing what communities enjoy, dozens of studios begin iterating the same idea but with games that have years long development cycle by the time they are ready for release they do so into an oversaturated market after interest has waned. But Sony thought they had figured it out by purchasing a successful live service studio so they took loads of their traditionally single player studios and mandated that they start work on a live service game with support provided by Bungie on how to make a successful live service.
Fast forward one year and unfortunately at this point Destiny 2’s revenue has dropped 45% since the acquisition of Bungie which means they aren’t making the money that Sony was hoping they would from their $3.6 billion investment so it’s time to cut costs. From October 2023 to July 2024, it is reported that up to 750 of Bungie’s 1600 employees were laid off as a part of Sony led restructuring claiming that they only resorted to lay offs “after exhausting all other mitigation options”. This left Bungie hamstrung to continue development on Destiny 2 expansions during an already tumultuous time in their community resulting in delays with the expansion creating even more negative press surrounding Bungie and Destiny. Compound with that the fact that a number of the live service projects Bungie was supposed to be advising have now been cancelled, delayed, or released so poorly that they had to be terminated just 2 weeks after launch (looking at you Concord). At the time of this article being written eight of the planned live service titles that were announced have been cancelled.
To this point I have set the scene that Bungie, a gaming giant, rose from small beginnings to become one of the most acclaimed studios in history but has stumbled a few times in recent years which isn’t inaccurate, but the years post Halo have been marred with a controversy that seems to keep repeating itself no matter how many times Bungie apologizes and promises to do right by creators.
Now, to address the art theft elephant in the room err… blog post. In 2021, Bungie released a trailer for the Destiny 2 expansion The Witch Queen that while initially received well by the community, was immediately met with reports that Artist Mal E’s fan art from 2020 made an unauthorized appearance in the trailer. Mal E took it in stride joking that their art was good enough to make a trailer but not win a fan art contest. Shortly after, Bungie reached out to the artist and acquired permission to use the art and credited the creator for their work. While not an ideal situation for Bungie they at least took appropriate steps to remedy it and came to an amicable solution for both parties.
Not long after though, in 2023, another trailer for Destiny 2: Season of the Deep released with yet another stolen artwork featured prominently in the video. After being called out for a second time for stolen artwork in a trailer, Bungie claimed that this specific trailer had actually been contracted to a third party, that the 3rd party believed the art to be official Bungie art and that they used it in error. Bungie then agreed to work with the artist Julian Faylona to compensate them for their work, however prior to the massive round of layoffs, the chief legal officer for Bungie also departed the company leaving Julian claiming that they still have not received the compensation that was promised. Bungie reassured Julian publicly via twitter that they were looking into it, and that it likely just slipped through the cracks following the Chief Legal Officers departure.
Another nearly identical scandal happened in September 2024 when partnering with Nerf to release a branded nerf gun in the style of one of the characters, Cayde-6 from Destiny 2, artist Tofu_Rabbit claimed that the nerf design had been stolen from their 2015 design stating that Nerf used several of the same art elements such as wearing, smudges, and scratches of the gun’s frame. Bungie again denied involvement claiming that the design had been provided by Nerf, but that they would take responsibility for compensating the artist whose design was undeniably used.
Now only one month later in October 2024, Kelsey Martineau sues Bungie claiming that the “Red War” campaign, the critically well received story missions that helped cement Destiny 2 as the much improved successor over its predecessor, was actually stolen from a work he published on WordPress as early as 2014. This now being the most controversial accusation levied against Bungie to this point, they set out to prove to the court that their work was substantially different from the author’s but they had one slight problem. Destiny 2 is a live service game, and one that gets regular major content updates. What this means is that every few months the game gets bigger which to most people isn’t a problem. However in the age where games are distributed digitally, they have to be stored internally on a hard drive rather than ran off of a disc which means as the game gets bigger, the file size balloons on modern hard drives until the only game you have space to keep installed is Destiny 2. Rather than having the ballooning file size problem, Bungie decided to “vault” their old content, functionally removing it from the game entirely. If you remember, this game also originally started as a full price game before going free to play so if you were someone that paid 60 dollars for the game at release (like myself), the game you played then has been entirely replaced with different content.
Now, in the face of litigation Bungie has to find a way to prove to a court that their game content that they can no longer access due to its removal from the game, is materially different from the work presented by plaintiff Kelsey Martineau. Bungie files for the case to be dismissed, citing player created youtube videos of “The Red War” campaign missions and wiki pages to prove to the courts that what they presented was not the same, and the provided evidence was promptly rejected as insufficient and the trial is still pending today.
Having established what appears to be a pattern of unauthorized use of creations from their community, it’s time to bring our attention back to Marathon. During Sony’s push towards releasing a dozen live service games by end of year 2025, Bungie shocked the world by releasing a trailer that wasn’t for a Destiny 2 expansion or even a sequel, but a reboot of their 1994 hit Marathon. But unlike their first foray into the sci-fi space epic, this reimagined 2025 version was not going to be a mechanically deep single player shooter with an exceptional multiplayer offering, but instead an always online, live service multiplayer, hero based “extraction” shooter where players have to drop into a map with a number of other players and attempt to “extract” themselves from the level with whatever loot they found during the match. The announcement was met with mixed reactions. Many were excited to see the return of Marathon so long after the last release in 1996, and most of the excitement revolved around the absolutely stunning reimagined art style in glorious 4k resolution to match the visual fidelity of textures we expect to see in games today.
Unfortunately many more were disappointed to hear that it would be launching with no single player outing, something that fans of the franchise have come to expect from the series and more disappointed to hear that it was stepping into the very saturated hero shooter genre that many gamers want studios to move past as it has gotten stale through years of overuse. Additionally not only is the market already full of other options but a number of them have already amassed large communities and it is much harder to convince someone to play your version of a game they already play than it is to onboard a brand new player. For players of games like Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, Apex Legends, Rainbow Six: Siege, etc. they are very rarely convinced to drop the game they have already spent so much time (and money for microtransactions) on to switch to another game that has similar mechanics but is asking them to start over with progression and the time sink that is required to progress in these always online games.
All that said, despite the disappointment of changes to a well known franchise, gamers were still generally excited and waiting to see more information before passing judgement. Unfortunately after years of minor controversies, while trying to repair the somewhat negative PR regarding their upcoming title, there would be yet another accusation against Bungie that would take Marathon’s planned September 23rd 2025 release date and turn it into an indefinite delay until otherwise stated.
Near the end of April 2025, a closed alpha playtest of Marathon was made available to select players for the first time, giving the gaming community their first taste of the reimagined Marathon. Only a few days following the alpha’s end, artist Antireal began to show evidence that work from their portfolio published as early as 2017 was showing up in the Marathon alpha. Unlike with the Destiny 2 controversies, where Bungie was accused of unauthorized use of fan content in promotional material, this situation appeared as though the misused works were pivotal in establishing the reboots visual identity. Antireal stated that they had noticed the stolen artwork in some of Marathon’s pre-alpha promotional materials but that they wanted to wait to see if any of the work made it out of internal development into the public build, which it did during April’s alpha playtest. And it goes far beyond simply being used as inspiration, because users were able to find nearly exact copies of the artist’s work appearing in the game.
With the accusations flying around the internet and a history of these types of controversies, Bungie was quick to respond publicly within only hours of the tweets. They claimed that it was a “Former Bungie artist” that had included the decals in a texture sheet that made its way into the playable build of the title and that no other member of the art team were aware of this having occurred. However, Antireal claims that a number of self identifying Bungie employees did follow them online including, but not limited to, the games current Art Director. Combine that with the fact that Antireal started posting their art in 2017 then Marathon development began in 2018, and it makes it very difficult to believe that the game’s entire visual identity was stolen by only one staff member at one of the largest development studios in the world. How could a AAA studio with hundreds of employees, that is managed by a multi-billion dollar company really say that a controversy of this magnitude was all the fault of one individual person who is, conveniently, no longer employed at the time of the news breaking when this art surely had to be approved by dozens of people from C suite executives to the focus groups that thought it was a good visual direction to go in?
Additionally, you expect us to believe that, your 4th stolen art accusation in 4 years, was also just a fluke that falls on the shoulders of anyone EXCEPT Bungie as a whole? First you blamed the third party contractors like the trailer studio and the toy company, and now you’re blaming the “former” employee. Former or not, it was Bungie staff that caused this disaster. Every time they promise it won’t happen again but it seems like they have run out of partners to throw under the bus, and now the call is coming from inside the house.
I have personally been concerned about Marathon’s ability to survive in this highly saturated hero/extraction shooter market, and that was before they poisoned the well. When the game was announced, it was met with much skepticism but received praise for its unique and striking aesthetic. Now the biggest positive the game had has been marred. Its biggest proponent promptly turned to its biggest detractor and now the game that was preparing for a launch only days away, now has no release date at all as Bungie tries to damage control their spiraling reputation. Just now, in August of 2025, during an investor call Sony reported Bungie would be shifted away from being an independent studio and will take a place in Playstation Studios, the opposite of what they were promised when they were acquired by Sony only 3 years ago. Like I stated earlier, if the investors aren’t happy with their return on investment, the studio gets downsized, and the devs get put on a tighter leash by the publisher, and that is exactly what is happening before our very eyes.
And here we are, only a week away from Marathon’s original scheduled release date and no updates regarding its whereabouts. Who knows how much work will have to be done to correct this error and how long it will take but what I do know is that Bungie staff morale is at an all time low. The community was willing to forgive but they can only forgive so much. After years of theft, microtransaction abuse and broken updates they are fed up with being treated like piggy banks who’s only job is to consume what they are given regardless of quality and they are rejecting Marathon. Just like they rejected the rest of Sony’s slew of live service slop that never existed to be entertainment for gamers, but a storefront to line the publishers pockets.
In a time where tens upon hundreds of live service games exist all competing for our time and money, not all of them can sit at the top and that means not all of them survive. When these super expensive AAA games fail it can cancel future projects, result in layoffs, or entire studios shuttered. That means real impact on real people. We are seeing all over the gaming industry rounds and rounds of layoffs even from the most successful companies including Bungie because it’s not enough to make a good game that sells well. Studios have to make a perfect game that sells forever.
In the end I should be clear that I AM a fan of Bungie and some of my oldest and fondest gaming memories take me back to playing Halo: Combat Evolved with my siblings. I played all of the Bungie Halo titles and both Destiny titles at release (my favorite is Halo 3: ODST by the way). Bungie games have been with me through nearly every stage of my life and I have always enjoyed them but it seems though that they have cultivated a culture of taking shortcuts that is catching up with them. Bungie isn’t just a part of the gaming industry, they are a part of gaming history. However their actions are leading them down a road that can very well leave them just as a footnote in the bigger story. My biggest hope is that this gaming giant is only stumbling and able to pick themself back up before they fall for good.