Bungie has come forward and admitted that it accidentally used an independent artist’s artwork in the latest Destiny 2 cutscene that explained The Witness’ origins. The developer revealed that it has contacted the artist and apologized for using their artwork in Destiny 2 without permission.
This situation came to light shortly after the latest cutscene released in-game after completing the seasonal weekly mission. This is the same Destiny 2 cutscene that was leaked nearly a month ago, that explained who The Witness is and what their endgame is. While Bungie’s storytelling and lore development in the cutscene was highly appreciated by the community, it ended up using a piece of artwork from an independent artist without their permission, failing to credit and compensate them. As soon as the artist brought this to everyone’s notice, the community rallied in their support and called out Bungie for being negligent. Thankfully, all the uproar was fruitful as Bungie has seemingly rectified its mistake.
A tweet by the official Destiny 2 Team account read, “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.” Bungie has also compensated the artist for their work and resolved the issue, which is something fans have applauded.
The cutscene itself was pretty important for the community considering it finally provided some clarity on the direction the game’s story is headed towards. When The Veil was introduced with the Destiny 2 Lightfall DLC, players were baffled by it as they knew nothing about it. Additionally, the game’s main antagonist, The Witness, who was revealed with the Witch Queen DLC last year also remained a mystery. Thankfully, the cutscene finally explained the Gardener and the Winnower theory, which seemingly fixed a lot of plotholes in the Destiny 2 story.
Despite the game’s story progressing well, the players have highlighted a number of issues that Bungie has not addressed. For instance, there was a lot of buzz in the community recently thanks to a video by YouTuber Azteccross, who pointed out the microtransaction problem in Destiny 2. In addition to this, Bungie is yet to provide a substantial update on Destiny 2’s Gambit game mode. The PVP community is also not happy with the current state of the game, which adds to the growing list of player complaints. However, Bungie has been proactive in addressing player concerns and making changes, so the community remains hopeful for now.
Destiny 2 is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.