A lawsuit has been filed against the developer studio Bungie in the USA. An author from Louisiana claims that the campaign from Destiny 2 in 2017 is a plagiarism of his fantasy world, which he presented online between 2013 and 2014.
What does Bungie allegedly copy? The author Kelsey Martineau states: He presented a fantasy world on WordPress.com under the pseudonym Caspar Cole in 2013 and 2014. This fantasy world would have been “directly” adopted by Bungie for its campaign in Destiny 2.
In the author’s fantasy world, there is also a Red Legion. The leader figure Yinnerah is almost identical to Dominus Ghaul in Destiny. Both are “social outcasts who become leaders”.
Moreover, both figures want to command a “powerful celestial body above the Earth”; in the author’s world it is the “Tonob Station”, in Destiny 2 the Traveler.
For the author, it is clear: In both worlds, rebels fend off the intruders of the Red Legion from the Earth while total chaos reigns in the background and the cities burn.
But you also have killer dogs and super weapons!
Does he have any further concrete examples? Both in Destiny 2 and in his world, the “Red Legion” has clear hierarchies. They have members known as “legionnaires”.
Moreover, both factions have battling creatures, similar to combat dogs.
The author also believes that Destiny 2 copied the idea for “powerful weapons” from him. Both he and Destiny feature superweapons.
What does the author want? The author is seeking compensation for copyright infringement. He desires a jury to decide on the case.
The lawsuit document is 53 pages long, as TheGamePost reports.
Lawsuit casts a negative light on Bungie regarding originality
What’s behind this: The lawsuit actually shows how generic the story of Destiny 2 is: “Evil military power attacks Earth. Calls itself Legion, uses combat dogs and superweapons, wants to conquer something in the sky” – that’s not the most original sci-fi plot of all time; rather, it is truly a standard story.
Also, the fact that the leader is actually a social outcast is a predictable narrative twist.
It’s no wonder that the story of Destiny 2 becomes so simple: Originally, a different story was planned for Destiny 2, involving Mara Sov, the Queen of the Awoken. Her narrative had been epicly set up over years in Destiny 1.
But since this version of Destiny 2 didn’t materialize, Bungie had to whip up an alternative in a short time and it ended up being a wild space rhinoceros.
The thought that someone would then steal these simple ideas from someone else is really unlikely.
Especially since the “Cabals”; the race of heavily armed turtles, had been in Destiny for years. And once you have militarized rhinoceroses, the path to “Dominus Ghaul” is a short one.
One can only speculate, but it is hard to imagine that someone at Bungie is lying awake at night worrying about a lawsuit from a sci-fi author whose work is freely available on a WordPress site. But in court and at sea, one never knows.
Bungie really messed up with the villain “Ghaul” from Destiny 2, as hardly anyone could take him seriously after he got mocked as “Gary”: Destiny 2 – No more Gary jokes
