THE TOP STORY Bungie splits from Activision.
Activision and Bungie break up. What does it mean for destiny 2?
Bungie kicked off 2019 with news that it is ending its publishing relationship with Activision eight years into the decade-long arrangement. Bungie always held the IP rights to the Destiny franchise, but Activision will transfer the publishing rights, leaving its fate entirely in the hands of its developers. But what does that actually mean for Destiny? Well, right now it just means an optimistic subreddit. After all, Activision so easily falls into the role of evil corporate overlord (in no small part due to earnings call banter like, “While Forsaken is a high-quality expansion, with strong engagement and new modes of play, it did not achieve our commercial expectations, and there is still work to do to fully re-engage the core Destiny fanbase”).
It’s thus easy to see Bungie as the opposite: a nurturing and protective guardian whose stewards tweet things like, “We are not disappointed with Forsaken. We set out to build a game that Destiny players would love, and at Bungie, we love it too.”
The temptation is to hope all the things players hate and chalk up to business motives, rather than for love of the game, will disappear with Activision. That would be impossible because, for as long as I’ve known it, the Destiny community is capable of being annoyed about and in love with everything simultaneously.
As per Bungie’s official announcement, “We know selfpublishing won’t be easy; there’s still much for us to learn as we grow as an
Activision so easily falls into the role of evil corporate overlord
independent, global studio, but we see unbounded opportunities and potential in Destiny.”
It feels like Bungie’s staff will be happier to focus on what success means to them as people who create the games, rather than have targets imposed by a publisher with shareholders to please. But it’s also sensible to expect missteps as Bungie figures out this publishing malarkey. And Bungie will still need to make money, so it will need to figure out which methods of monetization to keep and which to ditch.
Living Vicariously
We’re particularly interested to see whether PC will be part of Bungie’s future plans. Director Luke Smith confirms that Vicarious Visions, which handled the PC port, is winding down its involvement, so the question will be whether Bungie can find another company for the porting, or whether they staff up and bring it in-house.
Alternatively, independence might be temporary. Prior to Activision, Bungie spent a decade working on Halo with Microsoft. Perhaps Bungie fancies being single for a bit before partnering with a new publisher and settling down to produce Destiny 3 (and whatever that ‘Matter’ trademark filing from 2018 turns out to be). Philippa Warr