There are a number of ways it could have happened, with only a minor effort in due-diligence needed to ferret it out before production. Absolutely no excuse for this type of error (can you say theft?) at this level company. Bungie would be smart to buy her out with some six-figure satisfaction and then recruit her as a satisfied creative director and ambassador of the game.

B , they got caught out once again

Oof, tough choices. I can see any of these being the reason.

I mean several of the bungie team followed the guy they stole the art from. So do what you will with that information

[quote]Definately not B -[/quote] In this case it's looking as B, it doesn't sound like legal were informed of it potentially being a 1:1, but without the specifics and the lack of full release of investigation (unlikely to ever actually happen), it was someone hoping that it wouldn't be caught. Situation looks like - Former Employee had assets/references saved - FE decided to just use them in their texture sheets and (speculation) hope no one noticed - Current art team (inc director Joseph Cross) didn't notice or just simply used it because it existed and they thought it was already cleared - Legal signed off on it on the basis the current art team didn't flag those assets There is a degree of blame to be had here by Bungie for not verifying or confirming asset licenses, as well as the former employee for including it on texture sheets and not clearing it first. The onus is on Bungie now to basically be like 'well we hired them and we used their assets, how can we fix this' and work with Antireal.

Agreed. And for what it’s worth they have minimal controversy compared to most other studios

Yeah I know, that's been their answer so far though, although we all know that's blatantly not the case.

[quote]Its the next top guy's responsibility to clean house and correct any problems[/quote] You've clearly never worked in corporate - all the top guy does is delegate downward and so on and so forth. These people don't have any idea how anything actually works and they certainly never 'clean house' when it involves getting rid of someone to pass the buck to. They don't know how to correct problems because they're generally not told there are any problems in the first place, and that's on the people on the lower rungs of the ladder, not the top. That's why top level corporate jobs are generally so short lived (most only hold positions for 4-6 years); even if things get so messed up that they do have to take responsibility for something, they just have PR write an apology letter, sign for the golden handshake and walk away. All those at the top are concerned with is keeping the money flowing; they don't produce buggy code, they don't write bad storylines, they don't make dubious design decisions. That's all on the grunts. It's on them to set the expectations of those above them, and for them to be smart enough to under promise and over deliver (think 'Scotty's' repair estimates in 'Star Trek'). And if a manager walks into a room, asks how things are going and gets the answer 'All fine', then how are they supposed to know otherwise? Stop making excuses for Bungie as a whole - they're [u]all[/u] terrible at what they do.

Was looking over all the persons involved Twitter accounts, seems they followed the artist and took inspiration, literal copy paste. Not sure which artist did this copy pasta, but the artist who created it also had their work stolen for merchandise for a team liquid design on clothing awhile back as well. I see lots of similarities in the marathon aesthetic and also some to Clovis bray designs, not sure the time frames correlation since I do not have Twitter account. Very troubling.