The First Descendant Hit With Destiny Icon Plagiarism Accusations — but There’s Seemingly More to the Story

ign.com:

The First Descendant, a free-to-play co-op focused looter shooter from Korean games company Nexon, is blowing up across PC and console with big player numbers on Steam specifically. But as players debate the rights and wrongs of its ultra aggressive monetization, another controversy has hit the game.

Forbes reported that The First Descendant “is using barely-changed” Destiny 2 icons, and pointed to the remarkable similarities between icons used by developer Bungie for its veteran looter shooter and those used by Nexon for its new looter shooter challenger.

Certainly, the similarities are hard to ignore. One Bungie icon artist tweeted to say it “feels like a great day to mention that Bungie icon artists are a super-crew of talented folks with original ideas and sharp instincts.” But what’s actually happened here?

‘The First Descendant’ Is Using Barely-Changed ‘Destiny 2’ Icons via @forbes https://t.co/rGdbfKNfJX pic.twitter.com/gGKfoTkLk9

While Nexon is under pressure to explain itself (IGN has asked for comment but has yet to hear a response), fans have unearthed evidence to suggest the root of the problem can be found in an icon database that seems to misunderstand the concepts of personal and commercial use of assets.

Iconduck bills itself as a “free and open-source” database of hundreds of thousands of icons, illustrations, emojis, logos, and flags, and includes a number of Destiny icons Nexon may have lifted for use in The First Descendant.

As spotted by PC Gamer, Iconduck has a Destiny Icons set that includes 204 icons, all open sourced with a Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal license. “All icons can be used for personal and commercial purposes,” Iconduck claims.

This icon set was designed by Tom Chapman, who made the Bray.tech websites among others for Destiny 2. In a tweet, Chapman said most of the icons in the set were “ripped from the font files created by Bungie and its designers.”

“Most of the remainder are designed by Bungie and recreated by me or whoever