Comment on Bungie confirms it stole art once again, will undertake a 'thorough review' of Marathon assets
brsrklf@jlai.lu 3 days agoPlaceholder 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.
This is incompetence.
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.
This certainly sounds the right way to do this.
But I really wonder about it 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.
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
Placeholder art should go in the place folder art folder. Then just before release you delete the placeholder folder.
Not JUST before release, that’s how you get entirely missing textures, but you’re not wrong.
Eggyhead@lemmings.world 2 days ago
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.
BossDj@lemm.ee 2 days ago
The fact they keep doing it leads me to believe we’re missing several instances where they’ve gotten away with it
Eggyhead@lemmings.world 2 days ago
Absolutely. Now that people are paying attention, it’ll be easier to spot.