Forbes journalist accused The First Descendant of stealing icons from Destiny 2

Gaming journalist Paul Tassi from Forbes drew attention to the ability icons from the free shooter The First Descendant, which was recognized as the most anticipated game of July. Comparing them with icons from Destiny 2, the author of the article noticed a very strong similarity, and in some places — direct copying.

As you can see in the image below, The First Descendant's ability icons are not very different from the icons in the Bungie game:

However, everything turned out to be not so simple. Attentive readers have pointed out that many icons from Destiny 2 have appeared more than once on services with freely distributed content like this site. It is likely that the creators of The First Descendant could have used a similar resource. In addition, Bungie itself sometimes also uses free sources in its games, including some icons or weapon sounds.

The development studios behind The First Descendant and Destiny 2 have not yet confirmed whether this was a copy-paste or whether both games used the same resource source.

Paul Tassi also noted similarities with the Different Dream rifle from The First Descendant, comparing it to the IKELOS and the Sleep Simulator from Destiny 2. However, in this case, he still called this design coincidence a «respectful reference.»

Let us remind you that The First Descendant had a rather poor start on Steam — at release the free shooter received about 42% rating. The game was mainly criticized for poor optimization and direct copying of Destiny and Warframe.