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Bungie has released a statement, the first since the news of layoffs at the Destiny 2 studio broke earlier this week, with around 100 staff impacted. The fallout from the move has led some players to demand refunds for DLC in protest, added to the reportedly delayed Marathon slipping to 2025 and waning player interest, which only compounds matters.
In the statement, Bungie acknowledges "one of the most difficult weeks in our studio's history", as well as "feedback and concerns you have about Lightfall and recent Seasons, as well as your responses to the reveal of The Final Shape. We know we have lost a lot of your trust. Destiny needs to surprise and delight. We haven’t done this enough, and that’s going to change."
Further, Bungie knows that The Final Shape needs to be an "unforgettable Destiny experience". It directly references Forsaken, The Witch Queen and The Taken King, proclaiming that "these are the standard bearers we aim to live up to."
Whether that's something the studio can deliver on in its present incarnation remains to be seen; Bungie says it has more than 650 "dedicated teammates pouring all their energy and expertise into delivering this epic moment and its subsequent Episodes". Doing some quick napkin math, Bungie reportedly had a headcount of around 1200 before the layoffs, meaning approximately 450 are unaccounted for, presumably working on Marathon or other projects.
How do you feel about the future of Destiny 2, Marathon, and Bungie, for that matter? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source bungie.net]
Comments 11
It's a shame about the staff who were let go, but Bungie will be fine.
Popular rage tends to fade and headlines are forgotten.
As for reference to the studio's "current incarnation", Bungie is Bungie. They've had a rough week but they've also had a hell of a wake up call.
Besides, we've seen all of this, or something similar, happen before. (CDPR, Square Enix).
If the Final Shape is fun this will all be a great, headline generating comeback story and the articles around the web will ask us if we saw it all coming.
Or not 🤷
It’s amazing how things and companies change I’ve been playing with Bungie since the original Halo and all their Halos.
Then went onto Destiny years back with PlayStation. When Sony purchased them I thought yes that’s good for PlayStation as Bungie could team up with the other Sony developers and all that clever stuff.
Let’s hope it sorts it’s self out and Bungie become a stable and extremely good developer like most of Sonys other studios.
The Final Shape, as the finale to a story ten years in the making, is almost impossible to land perfectly. My expectation is a satisfying conclusion and anything beyond that is a bonus.
Even if Final Shape delivers, they will just dissapoint with the next expansion or project. They do this every time. TTK, Witch Queen, Forsaken....that's only 3 good expansions out the bunch of other mediocre to bad ones they've put out. These expansions aren't notable because they're objectively amazing, they're notable because they aren't trash. Destiny uses psychological tricks to temper your expectations so that you think things are better than they are within the context of that experience, they had a psychology adviser help with the design to keep players in a state of induced stress to keep them playing, and the expansion release is a part of that.
They've done this **** 3 times already. Just saying.
A 10 year story no one can physically recap on because they took the paid content away
You can tell from the beginning of Destiny 2 to where it is now that it’s a complete mess. It probably should be now that the Final Shape should be the final chapter in the story and time to move on to pastures new.
Bungie clearly has talent in this one corner of gaming - FPS live service. Nevertheless, that’s a burning platform to be standing on, which is volatile and inherently self-limiting. I suspect they’ve learned this now that when you limit access to your product to a small section of gamers who have started with you from the beginning, then your more susceptible to suffer if a portion of them walk away. It would serve them well on their next project to keep barriers to entry low for injecting a new player base to your game. That, or ditch the live service model (which is never going to happen).
@TheFakulty It's a huge problem. I've never played Destiny, and I was interested to give it a go and play it all at once, as I don't like drip-fed content... but you literally can't. They have taken away ('vaulted' to use their parlance) content you can get on discs and can't play. It's a joke.
The Bungie purchase was to lock down a FPS and provide a GaaS resource. Both are failing. This wasn’t an “organic growth” opportunity, it was a short sighted Jim Ryan knee jerk reaction.
Insomniac was organic growth, and they’ve performed beautifully.
I guess their outspoken and monetary support for far left organizations isn’t translating into more sales for them what a shame.
I more I read about this, the more it seems like this is bad management from Bungie rather than Sony.
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