Destiny 2 maker Bungie has admitted that a fan’s art was used, without permission, in the creation of a very important, lore-heavy scene that hit the game on Tuesday.
Bungie said the use was unintentional and came from “an external vendor that helped to create the cutscene,” who assumed it was art that Bungie itself had created.
The studio said it has reached out to the real artist, Julian Faylona of Element J21 Designs, to apologize and compensate them for the use of the work. Faylona discovered the use on Tuesday, when the new scene arrived in an update to Destiny 2’s latest season of content.
We’ve discovered that an external vendor that helped to create this cutscene mistakenly used this art as a reference, assuming it was official Bungie art.
We have reached out to the artist to apologize for the mix-up and to credit and compensate them for their awesome work. https://t.co/Sqkg5tRHKj
— Destiny 2 Team (@Destiny2Team) June 22, 2023
The original work is called “The Veil of Darkness” and Faylona created and published it in October 2020.
Tuesday’s video was one of the most important pieces of lore in the nine-year history of the sci-fi loot-shooter franchise. It explains several long-running concepts in the canon, including The Traveler, the mysterious orb hovering above Earth since the launch of Destiny in 2014.
