Bungie recently faced backlash from fans after a cutscene from Destiny 2 featured a sequence that showed fan-art that was created two years ago.
On June 20, Bungie revealed a new cutscene in Destiny 2 for its latest instalment in the seasonal questline as part of Season of the Deep. Apparently, the cutscene provided answers to questions about the Destiny 2 universe that players have been asking for a long time.
The three-and-a-half-minute video released by Bungie last week unveiled some of the deepest mysteries in the game’s nine-year-long history, explaining the origin of the season arc’s villain and many more.
Although it might benefit the game’s lore, the original artist, Julian Faylona, responded that she was shocked that Bungie took inspiration from her art without permission.
“I just realized Bungie took inspiration from my piece for this week’s cutscene,” they tweeted.
I just realized Bungie took inspiration from my piece for this week's cutscene. Certainly took me by surprise when I watched the cutscene.#destiny2 #DestinyTheGame #Lightfall
— Julian Faylona (ELEMENTJ21) (@ELEMENTJ21) June 20, 2023
As we can clearly see in the tweet, the similarities are strikingly identical. Apparently, Faylona originally uploaded the fan art online in 2020 and they were surprised to see the similarities between their art with the one used in Bungie’s trailer.
When questioned if they knew about Bungie’s Terms of Use, which allows the studio to utilise the artist’s work without credit since it was technically on their page, Faylona replied that they were aware.
“In fact, my tweet was more of a shoutout to acknowledge that my artwork made it into the cutscene. I’m genuinely happy about it actually,” they added.
We have reached out to the artist to apologize for the mix-up and to credit and compensate them for their awesome work.
— Destiny 2 Team (@Destiny2Team) June 22, 2023
Bungie has since responded to Faylona’s tweet, saying that they have “discovered that an external vendor that helped to create his cutscene mistakenly used this art as a reference, assuming it was official Bungie art.”
They have also reached out to Faylona to apologise for the mix-up and to credit and compensate them for their awesome work.
