Bungie has been through it in recent days with the company announcing hundreds of layoffs, plus staff moving to Sony, in what looks to be a major reorganisation of Bungie, which will no doubt effect Destiny 2. Today I want to take a look at what happened at Bungie, their numerous incubation projects including an action game including Destiny characters, plus the impact this is going to have on Destiny 2 expansions, episodes and ongoing content.
Before we get into things, I’m going to be referencing journalist sources close to Bungie including Jeff Grubb, Jason Schreier, Chris Scullion and Paul Tassi. I’ll link their articles in the description where you can check out the full details.
First of all, last wednesday Bungie announced they would be laying off 220 employees. This includes staff members from audio, narrative and player support. Another 155 Bungie staff would be moving to Sony Interactive Entertainment as part of an incubation project (Gummybears) moving to a new Sony-owned studio. This is the second mass-layoff programme in 12 months, which follows on from 100 layoffs in October 2023. Bungie is now significantly smaller than it was a week ago.
Why did this happen? Pete Parsons laid it out in an article posted to Bungie’s website last week.
“For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly. It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon.”
There is a combination of factors here. Sony purchased Bungie for $3.6 billion in 2022. Bungie were seen as a successful live-service company who could help Sony supercharge their live-service stategy. However, 2023 saw major problems for Bungie given their tent-pole expansion Lightfall led to a massive player drop-off. Lightfall on the surface was a hit initially, selling well, however player retention was very bad, with player numbers and player sentiment dropping to all time lows in November 2023. Bungie did manage to nail the landing with The Final Shape, however, less expanions were being purchased, and while player counts spiked again for The Final Shape, the player count drop off was even more dramatic than after Lightfall.
Bungie’s cash cow Destiny 2 has been in decline for some time, and Bungie had been investing in other projects. Marathon, an extraction shooter due to release in 2025, plus a project codenamed ‘gummybears’ and Destiny spin off projects.
What does this mean for Destiny?
Bungie had something called Payback in development with Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy at the helm. They had steered Destiny 2 through troubled times at one point before Joe Blackburn took over as Destiny 2 Game Director. Payback was a third-person action game where you’d fight monsters and solve puzzles, playing as Destiny characters. It shared design principles with Warframe and Genshin Impact.
This was a Destiny spin off game, rather than a full fledged sequel to Destiny 2. Bungie cancelled Payback to prioritise Destiny 2 and Marathon, and as part of that decision, Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy left Bungie.
Bungie now plans to invest in Destiny 2 and Marathon, but Destiny content cycles are going to be different compared to what we’re used to. Bungie are no longer going to persue yearly expansions. Yearly expanion sales have been in decline for sometime, therefore Bungie plan to persue 6 monthly content packs like Into The Light. According to Bungie staff, these content packs are going to be free, which means Bungie will be leaning on Eververse sales to prop up Destiny 2’s finances. Other vague plans in the works include leaving our solar system and visiting other worlds, something that has been referenced in-game with Destiny 2 Frontiers.
Destiny 3 was rumoured to be in development, however, it turns out this wasn’t the case. Fans thought they had deducted that the project codenamed payback was Destiny 3, however, this was more of a spin-off, rather than a sequel, that’s been put on the shelf for the time being. Destiny 2 does plan to continue, investing in player onboarding, plus focusing on activities to retain hardcore players, similar to Into The Light.
Future plans for Destiny 2 are now on hold until Marathon and Frontiers release. If both are successful then Bungie will return to Destiny 2 plans. Frontiers looks to be the next major release for Destiny 2, and it will likely take the form of these new content packs.
Content packs are not like expansions we had with The Final Shape. This was huge with a new destination, campaign, cinematics, post-campaign content, exotic missions etc. These new content packs will likely be shadowkeep-sized, and a smaller scale. One of Bungie’s goals is to create smaller-scale activities that a replayable.
Destiny 3 had been seen to be too big a risk in the current market. Bungie’s strategy had been to split up Destiny into smaller components including Payback, a mobile Destiny game with NetEase and a 3v3 PVP Destiny game, inspired by Trials of Osiris. Unfortunately none of this appears to be happening now, with the future Destiny strategy unclear until after Frontiers and Marathon.
It’s difficult to find any positives in this news, other than Destiny 2 will be prioritised once again alongside Marathon. Bungie are clearly going to have to go back to the drawing board, however, the talent drain inside the company has been massive. According to Jason Schreier some Bungie staff are optimisitc under the leadership of Tyson Green. However, many staff are dismayed that Pete Parsons is still there. Jeff Grubb did report Herman Hulst from PlayStation Studios was in the process of taking over at Bungie, however he did seem to walk back on that idea later. It certainly seems like Sony are in the process of making moves to align Bungie more into Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Let me know what you think in the comments.