One Guardian’s Destiny 2 Fan Art Was so Good That Bungie Accidentally Thought it was Theirs

Bungie recently released a new sort of trailer for Destiny 2 The Witch Queen. It’s basically a board of information that you follow from thread to thread as you uncover the plan of Savathun that’s leading up to The Witch Queen expansion. It’s quite cool, I really appreciate how easy Bungie makes it to follow the incredibly complex story that’s led us to where we are. It should make everything a lot more accessible for Guardians in the future. However, one Guardian spotted that their fan art, which hasn’t won any competitions, had been used in this trailer.

The image in question pops up at around 42 seconds in. It was originally posted by @relay134 on Twitter almost an entire year ago. The art is awesome, incredible even. However, it’s definitely not something a Bungie artist has made, which is where this whole thing could have blown up in Bungie’s face.

So some artists are incredibly funny about their images being used without their permission. Luckily, this one didn’t mind. They just thought it was funny that their art made it into a trailer, produced by Bungie, having been given no actual recognition by the developer. Maybe the artists saved it because they thought it looked good and accidentally sent it to the marketing team. Regardless, Cozmo piped up to say that the company has since gained permission to use the image from the artist, and they’re correctly credited.

This could have exploded in some kind of lawsuit if the artist wasn’t such a nice person. Copyright law is a hard thing to work around, and there are so many fan images on the internet that it’s a wonder more issues like this don’t occur. However, I think it’s a testament to the level that the Guardian community is at that this had a peaceful resolution. Any other community could have had a serious issue on its hands. As it is though, Guardians and Bungie have a decent relationship, so there’s no way that this was going to end badly.

Let us know what you think of the image and the trailer in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts on it all.

Jamie Moorcroft-Sharp

I'm an avid Destiny 2 fan and player. I fell in love with Destiny 1 during the early alpha and have been hooked by the universe ever since. I really enjoy playing with other Guardians, speculating about the lore, and writing about as much of the Destiny universe as I can.