An image depicting Destiny 2: Red War's main antagonist, Ghaul.
Image via Bungie

Someoneā€™s suing Bungie for allegedly stealing Destiny 2: Red War ideas

Get Ghaul'd.

As Destiny 2: Episode 2 ā€“ Revenantā€˜s Act 1 unfolds with questionable gusto, it seems that game content problems arenā€™t the only issue Bungie is currently facing. Notably, thereā€™s a new lawsuit cooking, alleging that Bungieā€™s writers had stolen the concept of Year 1ā€™s (now sunset) Red War campaign.

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Specifically, the word of the lawsuit was first brought to light by The Game Postā€™s Zuhaad Ali. The legal dispute was filed earlier this month by author Kelsey Martineau in Louisiana, alleging that many of the concepts and characters from Red War were ā€œdirectlyā€ taken from one of their science-fiction short stories. The lawsuit states that ā€œThe creators of Destiny 2 did not independently create their version of the Red Legion but instead of have wrongfully copied Martineauā€™s original creation,ā€ and though Bungie is yet to respond to the allegations, it will have to, at some point.

A screenshot of a scene from Destiny 2's Red War campaign showing the Traveler, captured.
Image via Bungie

Destiny 2ā€™s latest lawsuit is all about the sunset Red War campaign

The claim, which is available for reading via Scribd.com, comes with a whole slew of alleged similarities between Martineauā€™s fiction and Destiny 2ā€˜s Red War. Before going deeper into this, Iā€™d like to use this opportunity to highlight the fact that almost all the key elements that appeared in Year 1 of Destiny 2 had been fairly well established in the years prior. After all, Destiny 2 is a sequel, and Bungie cooked up Cabal lore a fair few years prior to the release of even the first Destiny title.

With that in mind, here are just a few highlights from Martineauā€™s library of allegations:

  • The name ā€œRed Legionā€
  • An alien faction of warlike Legionnaires
  • Similarities between Dominus Ghaul and Martineauā€™s Overlord Yinnerah
  • The presence of a large celestial object in the Earthā€™s low orbit, which the Red Legion attempts to capture
  • The use of the word ā€œfailsafeā€ in both narratives

The list goes on and on. A particularly interesting highlight can be found on pages 7 through 9 of the document, stating that it was ā€œwell publicized that the development team for Destiny 2 was forced to scrap a majority of their work midway through development in order to start over again.ā€ This is, presumably, used to suggest that Bungie mightā€™ve read Martineauā€™s self-published works and attempted to leverage it for the flagship title.

For those who didnā€™t have the chance to enjoy Destiny 2ā€˜s old, now sunset content, there is a somewhat acceptable solution: YouTube preservation. The only way to currently get a sense of what it all looked like is to check out the cutscenes and gameplay footage that veteran players had previously captured, as thereā€™s no way to actually engage with the Red War campaign in-game at this time. Will this play a role in the lawsuit? I donā€™t know, but it sure will be interesting to see how the situation develops.


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Image of Filip Galekovic
Filip Galekovic
A lifetime gamer and writer, Filip has successfully made a career out of combining the two just in time for the bot-driven AI revolution to come into its own.