The First Descendant, a free-to-play co-op heist shooter from Korean gaming company Nexon, is blowing up on PC and consoles with massive numbers of players specifically on Steam. But while gamers debate the rights and wrongs of its ultra-aggressive monetization, another controversy has hit the game.
Forbes stated that The First Descendant “uses barely changed” Destiny 2 icons, pointing out the striking similarities between the icons used by developer Bungie for its veteran shooter and those used by Nexon for its new looter shooter challenger.
Sure, the similarities are hard to ignore. One Bungie icon artist tweeted that “it’s like a great day to mention that Bungie icon artists are a super-crew of talented people with original ideas and sharp instincts”. But what actually happened here?
“First Descendant” uses barely changed icons of “Destiny 2” through @forbes https://t.co/rGdbfKNfJX pic.twitter.com/gGKfoTkLk9
— Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) July 7, 2024
While Nexon is under pressure to explain (IGN has reached out for comment but has yet to hear back), fans have uncovered evidence that suggests the root of the problem can be found in an icon database that seems to misunderstand the concepts of personal and commercial use property.
Iconduck bills itself as a “free and open-source” database of hundreds of thousands of icons, illustrations, emoticons, logos and flags, and includes a number of Destiny icons that Nexon may have lifted for use in The First Descendant.
As noted by PC Gamer, Iconduck has a Destiny Icons set that contains 204 icons, all of which are open source with a Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal license. “All icons can be used for personal and commercial purposes,” claims Iconduck.
This icon set was designed by Tom Chapman, who created the Bray.tech website for Destiny 2, among other things. In a tweet, Chapman said that most of the icons in the set were “ripped from font files created by Bungie and its designers.”
“Most of the rest were designed by Bungie and made by me or whoever contributed to the repo,” Chapman added, before challenging Iconduck himself: “I’ve grown to hate open source… I don’t want @iamiconduck using my work like that.”
It’s worth noting that Iconduck also makes available icons from the Pokémon franchise, including Pikachu and Poké Balls, Marvel Avengers icons, the famous Batman icon, and a bunch of other images that you’d think Iconduck wouldn’t have the rights to make available to people. use for commercial purposes.
There are many other icon databases that contain similar sets and make similar claims about their use. Nexon may have used icons from one of these websites, such as Iconduck, and modified them slightly for First Descendant, but the company has yet to explain its process. If it did, Nexon would then face pressure to explain why it did. IGN has again reached out for comment.
The First Descendant brings back memories of Palworld, Pocketpair’s controversial “Pokémon with guns” survival and crafting game that was accused of “ripping off” Pokémon, but was also playfully compared to all sorts of survival and crafting titles.
In general, The First Descendant is a mix of mechanics from various looter shooters already on the market. There’s more than just a whiff of Destiny about The First Descendant’s design, systems and mechanics, but there’s plenty of Warframe too. Check out IGN The first offspring is being checked to find out what we think of the game so far.
Wesley is the UK news editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be contacted at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.