Bungie will compensate an artist after its Destiny 2 Nerf blaster ripped off their work

• Facebook
• Tweet
• Pinterest
• Reddit
• Email

The Destiny 2 Nerf Ace of Spades blaster. | Image: Hasbro

When Bungie and Hasbro decided to create a real-life, dart-blasting Nerf version of one of the most famous Destiny 2 guns, someone got lazy — stealing a fan artist’s nine-year-old work instead of creating the Ace of Spades from scratch.
To Bungie’s credit, the game company has just announced it will “make sure” to compensate and credit Tofu Rabbit “for their incredible artwork,” after a rapid investigation.
As you can see in Tofu’s examples below, this is an incredibly clear-cut case of copying, despite the changes that Bungie or Hasbro’s artists made to the blaster.

Hey @Bungie @BungieHelp @DestinyTheGame @A_dmg04 @Cozmo23 @DestinyComArt soo, the NERF ace of spades DIRECTLY lifts a commission i did in 2015. This is not “similar” or a coincidence, you can see my same brush strokes and scratches/smudges.Original: https://t.co/GobNslptoI pic.twitter.com/zQoYEbfdGV— Tofu ️‍⚧️ Bunny (@Tofu_Rabbit) September 11, 2024

While one would assume Bungie owns the original underlying blaster design, Tofu was able to show that details from her fanart, down to the brush strokes, were copied. Bungie didn’t offer an explanation to The Verge; Hasbro didn’t immediately reply.
But yesterday, Tofu told The Verge that Bungie had already been “polite and encouraging” in private messages, saying she was hopeful the situation could be resolved soon, since Bungie has dealt with similar issues in the past.
Indeed, this isn’t the first or even the second time that Bungie or a contractor has plagiarized Destiny fan art, but it has compensated and credited some previous fan artists after it was called out.

We’ve discovered that an external vendor that helped to create this cutscene mistakenly used this art as a reference, assuming it was official Bungie art.We have reached out to the artist to apologize for the mix-up and to credit and compensate them for their awesome work. https://t.co/Sqkg5tRHKj— Destiny 2 Team (@Destiny2Team) June 22, 2023

I’m not one to make a whole stinker and it’s most likely that this was a mere accident but did @Bungie used @relay314’s Xivu Arath fan art for their @DestinyTheGame #TheWitchQueen detective wall trailer? pic.twitter.com/9yFT3BuFBy— Zyron Kai 猟師 • #CubaLibre (@TheExoticGuard_) September 25, 2021

The plagiarism wasn’t the only controversy around the new Nerf blaster. To order the $50 replica of Cayde’s Ace of Spades handcannon, players first have to unlock the Legend status in the game, which reportedly takes an incredible amount of grinding, something that Bungie has pledged to somewhat fix.
“If you’re an existing player, you likely have a lot of the prerequisites to start earning the title but new players would require an almost comical time investment,” my colleague Nick Statt tells me.

That’s a shame, because I’d have loved to own this blaster. It looks like one of the best licensed blasters Hasbro has yet made, a six-shot revolver with two removable cylinders and battery-powered motors for blasting. Years ago when Nerf did a licensed Overwatch revolver, it didn’t actually revolve.

The Destiny 2 Nerf Ace of Spades blaster. | Image: Hasbro

When Bungie and Hasbro decided to create a real-life, dart-blasting Nerf version of one of the most famous Destiny 2 guns, someone got lazy — stealing a fan artist’s nine-year-old work instead of creating the Ace of Spades from scratch.

To Bungie’s credit, the game company has just announced it will “make sure” to compensate and credit Tofu Rabbit “for their incredible artwork,” after a rapid investigation.

As you can see in Tofu’s examples below, this is an incredibly clear-cut case of copying, despite the changes that Bungie or Hasbro’s artists made to the blaster.

While one would assume Bungie owns the original underlying blaster design, Tofu was able to show that details from her fanart, down to the brush strokes, were copied. Bungie didn’t offer an explanation to The Verge; Hasbro didn’t immediately reply.

But yesterday, Tofu told The Verge that Bungie had already been “polite and encouraging” in private messages, saying she was hopeful the situation could be resolved soon, since Bungie has dealt with similar issues in the past.

Indeed, this isn’t the first or even the second time that Bungie or a contractor has plagiarized Destiny fan art, but it has compensated and credited some previous fan artists after it was called out.

The plagiarism wasn’t the only controversy around the new Nerf blaster. To order the $50 replica of Cayde’s Ace of Spades handcannon, players first have to unlock the Legend status in the game, which reportedly takes an incredible amount of grinding, something that Bungie has pledged to somewhat fix.

“If you’re an existing player, you likely have a lot of the prerequisites to start earning the title but new players would require an almost comical time investment,” my colleague Nick Statt tells me.

That’s a shame, because I’d have loved to own this blaster. It looks like one of the best licensed blasters Hasbro has yet made, a six-shot revolver with two removable cylinders and battery-powered motors for blasting. Years ago when Nerf did a licensed Overwatch revolver, it didn’t actually revolve.

Read More