Sony has leaked The Final Shape, leading to spoilers flooding out onto the internet. This includes cutscenes, season pass items, the raid exotic, raid mechanics, plus info about the firsy episode called Echoes. Today I’m going to look at how this happened, but I won’t be going into spoilers, and also have a look at how the partnership with Sony is going given this catastrophic event.
It looks like The Final Shape was made available via the PlayStation 5 through it’s streaming service, which may have been pushed to Sony’s audience early by mistake. It’s been taken down quickly, but the damage has already been done.
PlayStation 5 players were able to start the campaign, and also see info in the collections related to weapons, lore and story spoilers. Raid weapons, raid mechanics, ritual weapons, major story beats, even Episode 1 Echoes details have been released.
There are a whole load of problems with this. It’s the end of the 10 year saga, the culmination of the Light vs Darkness Saga and for many, the story is going to be spoiled. If you don’t want to be spoiled, then I suggest staying off Twitter and YouTube until the Final Shape releases. YouTube is recommending spoiler filled content to the Destiny 2 audience, and Reddit is flooded with spoiler screenshots.
The raid is a major spoiler. Everyone is going to want to go into the raid unspoiled, however, this is perhaps the highest profile raid in Destiny 2, and the mechanics are out there, so if you don’t dig into the spoilers you and your team are at a disadvantage compared to those who have seen spoilers. I’ve been covering Destiny 2 for years and this is the biggest leak I have seen ahead of a major expansion, and it looks like it’s down to Sony.
We don’t know the technical ins and outs of how this happened, but fault appears to lay with the PlayStation game streaming functionality. Sony needs to fix this ASAP, and apparently Destiny 2 isn’t the only game affected.
This massive mess created by Sony led me to thinking about how the relationship between Bungie and Sony is going. Not great.
In July 2022 Sony purchased Bungie for $3.7 billion. PlayStation shared the news on Twitter, saying, “the agreement to acquire Bungie has closed. So now we can officially say… welcome to the PlayStation family, Bungie!”
Bungie said at the time “We are proud to officially join the incredible team at PlayStation, we are excited for the future of our company, and we are inspired to bring together players from all over the world to form lasting friendships and memories.”
However since then the relationship appears to have soured. Sony have injected live service games into their strategy, with the last PlayStation Showcase not going down well with fans with the reveal of Fairgames, Concord and Bungie’s own Marathon, a live service extractiuon shooter that has since been delayed to 2025.
Sony have been publically critical of Bungie in recent months. At the back end of 2023 Bungie had to make a number of layoffs given their revenue projections were running 45% below projections. Player numbers for Destiny 2 had declined since the lacklustre reception of Lightfall, and rumours were swirling that Sony could takeover Bungie fully, rather than Bungie maintaining their independence. Morale was low at Bungie, and morale was low in the community at the end of 2023… it felt like things had really turned around in the last 6 weeks with Into The Light and the build up to The Final Shape.
Sony have been very public with their criticism of Bungie. PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki praised the creativity of Destiny 2 studio Bungie, but also said he wants to see more “accountability” for development budgets and schedules from the studio’s leadership.
He went onto say Bungie staff had a “solid understanding” of their individual roles and responsibilities, but “don’t necessarily understand how their respective efforts tie into overall growth, sustainable profit generation, and higher margins.”
“By providing everyone involved with highly transparent description of the company and industry conditions, as well as of analyst views, I would like to encourage them to come to their own realizations,” Totoki said. “This will get everyone in the business onto the same page. Then, I would like them to consider what we need to do to work toward our major objectives.”
“I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management, and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services,” he said. “However, I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines. I hope to continue the dialogue and come up with some good solutions.”
Here we have Sony essentially threatening Bungie with a full takeover if they don’t pull their pants up and do better.
There has always been a lot of pressure with The Final Shape. It’s the culmination of the Light vs Darkness saga, the end of a 10 year story and a natural dropping off point for many players. The last major expansion, Lightfall, was not received well, leading to a major drop off of players throughout 2023. That player drop off continued until April 2024, with the release of Into the Light, a content filler Bungie put together to help tide players over until The Final Shape release.
Therefore, The Final Shape has to deliver. It has to deliver for the current player base, to wrap up the current story and lead us into a new saga for the next few years. It has to deliver for Bungie, given the Sony Sword of Damocles is dangling.
It’s not exactly clear what impact these leaks are going to have, but there’s no doubt this is a disaster for those at Bungie. My hope is The Final Shape continues to be a banger, and while this is major news today, it will be quickly forgotten, and we can all move on with going into Episodes and the next steps for Destiny 2.
Let me know in the comments what you think.