Joseph Cross, the art director for Bungie’s upcoming PvPvE extraction shooter Marathon, has announced that he is leaving the company. Cross took to social media platform X to announce his departure, where he wrote about being proud of the work he did on building out the world of Marathon.
“I’m incredibly proud of the visual world we built for Marathon,” wrote Cross. “Getting support at this scale for something a bit different is rare, and the art team at Bungie is the best in the biz. I’ll be enjoying playing the game as a fan with all of you. Massive thank you to everyone who has supported through all of it.”
Discussing his departure with Kotaku, Cross said that it was his own decision to leave Bungie. He went on to note that “I’m super proud of the project and what the team accomplished over the last six years,” regarding his work on the concept art for Marathon as well as many other things for Destiny 2.
When he was asked by a player what has been his favourite concept art created for Destiny during his time at Bungie, Cross posted an image showcasing a lineup of capes for Hunters, all of which made use of a wide range of colour palettes as well as different iconography that paid homage to the background lore and current storyline of Destiny 2.
Cross’s departure comes just days after Bungie officially announced that Marathon will be releasing in March 2026, and that it will sell for $39.99. Along with this, the studio had also showcased some gameplay from the upcoming title, as well as details of what to expect from its launch.
When it comes out, Marathon will include four maps: Perimeter, Dire Marsh, Outpost, and the UESC Marathon’s Cryo Archive. The last one of these will serve as the end-game challenge, and will become available when the game kicks off its first season shortly after launch. Along with this, a new Runner was also unveiled—the scavenging-focused Rook.
Earlier this month, artist Antireal had also announced that the issues surrounding Bungie having stolen their assets to develop Marathon had been resolved. These assets were revealed as having been plagiarised back in May, when Antireal said, “the Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs I made in 2017.”
“Bungie is of course not obligated to hire me when making a game that draws overwhelmingly from the same design language I have refined for the last decade, but clearly my work was good enough to pillage for ideas and plaster all over their game without pay or attribution,” continued the artist.
“I don’t have the resources nor the energy to spare to pursue this legally but I have lost count of the number of times a major company has deemed it easier to pay a designer to imitate or steal my work than to write me an email.”
This month, however, Antireal had said that the issue had been resolved between the artist and Bungie and Sony Interactive Entertainment “to my satisfaction.” The artist did not reveal whether this means that compensation was paid or whether the assets in question will be removed from the upcoming game.
