I doubt they could have kept the artist silent if they did some shady shit. It’s not like Antireal signed an NDA with them.

My hope is based off the fact that Marathon will most likely be a make or break game for Bungie, and they desperately needed that PR situation out of the way to get the maximum amount of players onboard. Throwing money and a title at the artist is a much cleaner solution than trying some underhanded BS that might create an even worse situation.

Probably: https://www.eurogamer.net/marathon-plagiarism-scandal-resolved-satisfaction-of-artist

Nuanced incident, watch this if you WANT to learn:

https://youtu.be/q_fjfJREGIg?

8 consecutive gut punches.