Bungie's content vaulting creates legal hurdles in plagiarism case

In a recent legal battle, Bungie, the developers of Destiny 2, find themselves struggling to defend against a plagiarism lawsuit filed by a man claiming that certain story and lore elements of the game were taken from his prior work published on WordPress before the game's release. This case has arisen against the backdrop of Bungie's controversial decision to implement a content vault system, which leads to large portions of the game—including the Red War campaign and various DLCs—being rendered unplayable. As a result, Bungie is now unable to present direct evidence of the game content, which hinders their legal defense significantly. The court has rejected their attempts to substitute actual gameplay with Wikipedia entries and creator lore videos, asserting that such indirect evidence does not fulfill the requirement for a fair comparison in the lawsuit. The plaintiff's claims revolve around general science fiction themes, making it difficult to substantiate specific allegations of plagiarism. Bungie's inability to demonstrate how their content differs from the plaintiff's claims is a unique challenge that has drawn mixed reactions from the community. Players have expressed frustration over losing access to content they paid for, citing Bungie's rationale that maintaining older content has become technically unsustainable. With the judge dismissing Bungie's motion to dismiss the case, the outcome remains uncertain, and the gaming community watches closely to observe how Bungie adapts to this legal situation and whether the unplayable content will ever return to the game.