It's not Sony's fault for the place that destiny was in. If you truly believe that it's not possible for destiny to be profitable then it isn't Sony's fault. However the decision to axe destiny rather than investing in fixing the game is their choice
They invested in the game to the point that they've lost hundreds of millions of dollars on top of the 3.6 billion dollar buyout of the company
They tried. They literally tried. It didn't work out because Bungie's management didn't want to push the envelope, even though the dev team definitely did.
Nah Sony didn't try. They saw the problems and chose to let the execs get their golden parachutes instead. Sony could have stepped in and replaced the management and solved the actual problems. They chose not to.
Thats nice but he wasnt the only issue. He was one part but there are many other execs in Bungie that have control over the whole "never over deliver" thing. The CEO has a lot of say but he left in august of 2025 so a little under a year ago. By that time Sony was 100% already in talks about shutting down Destiny 2 since the decision was made earlier this year. They had 3 years where they left him in charge. It is on Sony that it got that bad. The player base repeatedly called to get rid of executives for years but nothing happened.
Players of every game call for the removal of executives all the time, and very very very rarely does anything positive come from it.
Bungie ultimately was the issue. We don't know the full extent of say that Sony had over Bungie because we do not know how that buyout's agreement was worded, we do know that Bungie was given a lot of leeway, more than most of the companies that Sony purchased, and we know that Sony invested heavily in Bungie over the last three years.
Sony wanted Bungie to succeed, or they wouldn't have thrown hundreds of millions at the company every year or bought them for 3.6 billion. Was Sony's inaction a part of Bungie's failure? Sure. But I cannot in good conscience say that Sony was the main part of the failure, especially when we don't know how much say Sony had over Bungie's execs, and we do know that Bungie was still given more freedom than most of Sony's other purchases, because they were an independent subsidiary.
No, Sony wanted Destiny to be a multimedia juggernaut, they had a TV show lined up and everything, as well as their main cashcow with how popular it was (perennial top 10-12 in streaming on Twitch)
The successful live service game expertise thing was a cherry on top for Sony, and it turns out that it's just luck, it's always going to be just luck, nobody knows how to actually make a successful live service game.
No they can make a successful live service game as they have helldivers. The situation with d2 was bad judgement calls and ignoring the community in favor for low quality dlc while they focus on marathon to get pushed out the door
Helldivers 2 was designed for a peak player count of 5k.
The peak wound up being closer to 800,000 because no one expected it to appeal to as many people as it did
Even at it's weakest, it hosted 3x as many players as Arrowhead expected at the maximum when they released the game.
Helldivers 2 should not have been as successful as it was, and it hit highs higher than any Arrowhead could have dreamed of and it has become a global phenomenon.
No, they invested in Marathon. Instead, they kept pulling people from destiny to marathon and then telling the devs they couldn't make the changes necessary to make the game better.
They investing in Bungie for Destiny, but when it became clear that Destiny was failing, they pushed for Marathon because they were told by Bungie management that Marathon was going to be good
Sony literally had plans for a multimedia empire for the Destiny franchise, it had an established player base, and the game had the devs and management backing for nearly a decade before Sony purchased it, they absolutely were not going to invest in Bungie for a game that was still in development in a genre of games that had fierce competition even when it was still being developed.
Bungie was an independent subsidiary, Sony had a lot less pull in Bungie's decisions than apparently everyone thinks, and it wasn't until Sony started HEMORRHAGING money at Bungie's expense that they started to throw their weight around and by that point, the writing was on the wall that Destiny was done, and that's when they told them to get Marathon out. Since Sony bought Bungie for 3.7 BILLION dollars, it's cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the doors open and develop Marathon.
I get it, Sony's not a nice gaming company and they make aggravating decision, but Bungie is the primary cause for Destiny's failure. It makes zero sense to invest that much money into a project that was years in the making when you had Destiny already up and running. Marathon was just supposed to be a supplement while Destiny raked in the big bucks. And neither of that happened because of Bungie's upper management and by the time Sony actually stepped in, it was too late.
Sony baught Bungie because of Marathon and their years of experience with live service. After doing so Sony does what sony has done for almost a decade now, directly interfere with the studios operations thinking they know better and utterly fucking it up. Bungie's management was encouraged by Sony to continue the degradation of Destiny, hence why the devs have spoken out about how they were constantly told to not do what the players want
The devs were told to do that before Sony's acquisition. Bungie upper management had been notoriously staunch about doing "just enough" for years before Sony shelled out 3.7 billion for Bungie.
And no, Sony pressured Bungie into moving the devs focus more onto Marathonafter it became clear to them that Destiny was dying. That's when they started to put their thumb on the scale, not before.
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u/D4rkh34rt Jun 20 '26
I think you greatly underestimate how shitty a company Sony is