Thanks to Bungie and their tendency to get caught red-handed doing cheap, lazy, illegal work, this article is going to have fantastic timing.
The Art of the Steal

Don’t look at me like that, Joseph Cross, art director for the soon-to-be DoA live service slop, Marathon. I’m not the one who got caught stealing art from small artists trying to make a humble living doing what they love. All jokes aside, I believe Mr. Cross’s face is a result of him being the only one in Bungie’s audio-abomination of a livestream that was able to see the writing on the wall. To his credit, he wasn’t giggling and pretending his game was in a good spot.
And that’s all the credit he’s going to get in this article.
Being conservative and using averages based on reported Glassdoor Bungie art director salaries, as well as art director salaries in Bellevue, WA (Bungie HQ location), we can estimate Mr. Cross makes roughly around $130,000/yr. Given his experience and long tenure with the company, it’s probably safe to assume more. Not exactly modest, but apparently not enough to justify doing his job effectively. Which is why he and his team had to borrow art from, as reported by DualShockers, a definitely employed artist that goes by 4nt1r34l on X.
Wait, I’m getting word that… a gaming journalist was covering for a major AAA studio? Impossible!

According to 4nt1r34l, “in 10 years i have never made a consistent income from this work and i am tired of designers from huge companies moodboarding and parasitising my designs while i struggle to make a living.” She had her art blatantly stolen from her (see below), and Mr. Cross thought placing the blame on a former employee would be the right move. Even if it’s true, we have to assume the art director is signing off on every visual element of the game. I’m usually one to give the benefit of the doubt to individuals who show genuine remorse for a mistake, but from Mr. Cross’s actions he only appears to be sorry that he got caught. Again. And used a scapegoat, again. In 2023, Bungie admitted to using fan artist Julian Faylona’s artwork in a Destiny 2 cutscene without obtaining permission, after somehow mistaking it for their own artwork. Although the company initially claimed they would provide credit and compensation, reports indicate that those promises remain unfulfilled. Mr. Cross claims that they will “do right” by 4nt1r34l, but color me skeptical. After all, Marathon’s budget probably wouldn’t cover it. It’s not listed publicly, but using AI to give an estimate based on industry trends, team size, duration of the project, and financial context concerning Sony’s acquisition of Bungie, the estimated budget range is between $100 million and $200 million, not including marketing. I highly doubt they could afford images created by a freelance artist.

Bigger Isn’t Better
The Marathon controversy led me to question how many times this might have happened and gone unnoticed by the artist or the public. If Bungie’s excuses are to be believed, these studios have become bloated to the point where they are ungovernable, although the evidence of safe, overly censored games shows there is simultaneously too much governance. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was reported by MobyGames to have had 7,074 individuals listed in the credits, and their budget was reportedly between $250 million and $350 million. There has been some controversy over the exact sales and revenue made on the game, but none of that matters. What matters is, after all the time and money invested, Ubisoft had to be bailed out by Tencent in a major restructure. Ubisoft is just one of many AAA studios that flew too close to the sun, with at least 16 other studios suffering shutdowns, cuts, or restructures since January 2024, including EA, Sony Interactive, and Netflix’s Team Blue. I didn’t even know Netflix had a AAA studio to begin with, honestly. Luckily, former Avowed director, Carrie Patel, has recently joined Netflix Games. Judging by her recent success with Avowed, Netflix may only have to shut down half of their 6 studios by 2027.
These companies simply can’t keep up with their budgets, especially since a lot of them, like Sony, have been caught chasing trends and are realizing too late that live service games aren’t what gamers want. This has resulted in multiple canceled projects on top of several canceled studios. While it’s hard to say just how much money Sony has lost over these canceled projects, because no one wants to share unfavorable metrics, nippon.com has reported that, “Sony Group Corp. said Wednesday that its consolidated net profit in the fiscal year through next March is expected to decline 12.9 pct from the preceding year to 930 billion yen.” This is, in part, due to the tariffs, but I suspect their bad business practices in gaming play a larger role. Sony has canceled at least 8 projects since the beginning of 2024, with Concord costing them between $200 million and $400 million alone, not to mention the closure of Firewalk Studios and the loss of 210 jobs. And if you look out your basement window to the left, you’ll see a currently imploding Bungie, that was acquired by Sony in 2022 for $3.6 billion. And Sony isn’t the only big dog in trouble. If you’ve already forgotten Redfall and Starfield, well I can’t really blame you. At least 343 has the Midas touch. That is, if gold was brown, stinky, and fell out of a dog’s asshole. I can’t stress enough how much the current strategy in AAA games sucks, but it’s not just for budgetary reasons.

Bigger isn’t always better for development teams either. The YouTube channel, Legendary Drops, describes the modern AAA development team best. They’re creating “Frankenstein projects where nobody knows what someone else is building, or how this whole thing fits together.” As mentioned previously, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows had a development team of over 7,000 people, per report. Now, the credits roll for over two hours, so I’m not about to type out all of the ridiculous titles present in them, but I’ll give you a few Ubisoft could’ve saved money on. For one, they had an “Associate Monetization Director” in a single-player game. If I could only point to one thing and say, “this is what’s wrong with the gaming industry,” that would be on the short list. You had a dialect coach for Yasuke. Here’s a solution Ubisoft, hire someone who is qualified for the job. There are multiple positions for artistic directors, I’m sure each with their own vision in mind. There are countless administrative roles, like the “Engine Technical Architect,” which must attribute to some confusion during development. How many emails are sent for clarification on smaller details? How much time is spent in meetings? More importantly, how much time are the actual developers given to create? And how much of what they create makes it through the system of endless filters. You typically get 1 of 3 results with modern AAA development: you get an overly sensitized, boring, cookie cutter game, you get a sloppy, incohesive mess of a game, or you have extremely long development times in order to achieve a great product, like we see from Rockstar. Meanwhile, in the past few years, we’ve had success stories proving that great games can be made by smaller teams, and I believe a smaller team is a primary reason for the success. Talented artists begin their paths toward creation based on passion, and the bureaucracy of AAA studios tosses that passion in a heap of 100s or 1000s of other passions until they all suffocate each other. Smaller studios, like we see in Larian Studios and Sandfall Interactive, require less time for managerial communication, and more time for actual collaboration. People engage in multiple roles, and as a result, those parts feel more cohesive. Gameplay systems are designed together instead of 100 people designing their own puzzle pieces based on the concept of a puzzle someone else created. On the rare chance you nail that concept, what are the odds that the concept meshes well with the other systems within the game? The best example I can think of is the comparison of music between the final boss fights in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Expedition 33 spends the entire game building on compositional themes that intertwine with the characters, and every piece of music feels powerful and impactful. Every streamer I’ve watched play the final boss has a physical reaction to the music because of this. Everyone I see reacting to AC’s final boss fight music is confused and thrown off because it seems so out of place. That’s the difference.

Out of the Ashes
It may seem like AAA gaming is burning to the ground, with a different controversy arising every day. While the day of AAA’s death is probably quite a way off, there are obviously problems that need to be addressed if we want to save it. The question is, where do we go from here? The answer is, just look at what the successful games are doing. In the past couple of years, the biggest games from a cultural standpoint have been, for the most part, AA or indie games made with a fraction of the budget of AAA games, and with a fraction of the staff. These studios are led by passionate creators with a cohesive goal in mind. Some indie successes, such as Schedule 1, are made by only one creative mind. We’ve had games such as Helldivers 2 take the world by storm, just by offering gamers something unique, while studios like Ubisoft are reskinning previous successes and calling it a day. The free market is coming back into gaming, and competitive pricing will play a vital role. While major publishers like Nintendo and studio executives like Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Entertainment are publicly pushing for an increase in game prices to account for their astronomical budgets, there are gems like Expedition 33 available for $50, and cheaper if you got it at or before release. In case you didn’t know, Expedition 33 is Metacritic’s highest rated game of all time, and you can get it cheaper than you can get Mario Tennis Aces ($59.99), which released in 2018.
The heads of these studios aren’t dumb. That’s why we’ve already seen massive cuts across the industry. They got caught with their pants down, chasing trends voiced by the “modern audience.” In their defense, those voices are really loud, but it turns out the modern audience isn’t buying games. I think the studios will continue to get smaller and the budgets will come down. The only question is whether the prices will, too. Xbox just released Oblivion Remastered for $50, although I’m sure they knew it would be a hit. And Sony has already begun building a studio based around AI development, take that as you will, so they are showing reactions to the current market, at least. If these companies don’t react to what the people want, more people are going to be buying games from the developers who care about the art form, as well as their customers’ wallets. And if we’re going to get to play more games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Expedition 33, I’m all for it.