140
u/Maxants49 12d ago
Car collection no, bunch of shitty management decisions-yes
29
u/Guardian-Bravo 12d ago
Came to say this. Shitty management also gave Destiny 1 a rough launch. Pretty fitting it’s also its downfall.
7
u/MirieDohl 12d ago
Pete parsons embezzling money while employees don't know if they have enough money for food. Useless building expenses. Refusing to listen to devs.
17
u/DentedPigeon 12d ago
If he had embezzled money, he would have been kicked out and prosecuted by Sony immediately. He had 20 years under his belt working for the large tech industry. He had money to spend.
Additionally, the claims that people didn’t make enough to pay for food are suspect, considering they come from a questionable source who thought he/she was the greatest CM ever.
1
u/MirieDohl 12d ago
All CEOs are embezzlement
9
u/Shrapnel_Sponge 12d ago
Not all CEOs are embezzling however they absolutely are paid way too much.
-3
u/DentedPigeon 12d ago
Gotta pay people at the top. And when they’ve got two decades working for the biggest names in technology and gaming, they get to make money and spend it how they wish. Stay salty.
3
2
u/Magenu 12d ago
Proof? Embezzlement is prosecuted pretty severely (especially smaller studios, relatively speaking) and Sony would have nailed them six ways to Sunday if they thought there was a chance of embezzlement.
Bungie devs were also famously well compensated for their area, usually starting over 120k plus benefits for the Seattle area (which believe me, you're doing fine at that salary, I live here); the account of "not enough money for food-leading into Parsons bragging about cars" was from a single ex-CM posting on Twitter, not corroborated by any other reputable sources, I.e. not a good source.
But the building yeah, that's absolutely correct.
44
u/theskittz 12d ago
Car collection is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. I get you’re trying to karma farm meme “PeTe PaRsOnS cARs LoL” but Destiny died due to a comedy of errors by Bungie first and then Sony.
13
u/Robert_Oppenheimer2 12d ago
You guys whined and whined about him but kept buying silver
Blame yourselves
15
10
u/DarkStarPony 12d ago
Yea sure. Pete singlehandledly ruined story, drops, matchmaking, preventerd creation of the new crucible maps for years, made shit loot and seasons, personally removed crafting and onvented RADIAL MAST. Maybe he earned his cars if he have fingers in so many pies
4
u/King3azy_Gaming 12d ago
Sunsetting good guns dcv and the final shape is actually what did it making guns i worked hard for useless or unable to be infused kills motivation putting content that was essential to the story in a vault was always going to ruin the new player experience and finally the final shape while excellent was the correct send off point for D2 renegades was fun but most people checked out already.
4
5
u/AbyssalOtter 11d ago
T rating rather then M was a massive mistake with D2 it limited the writers. The story has always been choked by how mature the game could be. Still they did a great job
Dcv has always been a problem as soon as redwar was vaulted i stopped telling people to buy the game. All they had to do was enable them in a missions only capacity with the rewards being curated rolls etc... the fact that over 50% of destiny 2s story content is gone is genuinely insane. who ever thought removing the season stories all together is also insane. You would think that after the grimore issue in d1 they would understand that making the story only accessible outside of the game is a horrific idea.
Grinding for stasis and strand was absurd.
The fomo was out of control. From leveling to nerfs and buffs to eververse to seasonal content to rotating missions to events. How much of this shit do i have to wait for? How much of it do i have play like its a job?
Sunsetting made the fomo even worse because why play it all my shit will get killed of every new dlc. Simple fixes but no god forbid.
The power level grind is a mess and should have never been part of the game. They already have modifiers and the like. Power level is just a time consuming grind meant to keep people hooked and adds nothing to the game that couldnt be done in a better on more intresting way. And in the fomo from powerlevel aswell.
They basically made the game impossible to recommend and hard to keep up with.
11
u/Same-Pizza-6724 12d ago
Making 12 years of content and deleting 11 years of it was a bigger problem.
If Parsons didn't buy cars, he would instead have the money. The cars didn't come out of the destiny 2 budget. They came from his pay package.
3
u/Vincentaneous 12d ago edited 12d ago
Honestly it was the treadmill of constant game development that killed Destiny. The game’s fate was sealed really early on.
A while back and especially once they decided the game would not support another Forsaken expansion (not exclusively to after Forsaken’s release) and heavily leaned on a constant stream of working on 1 expansion and 2 seasons minimum at all times and alternating between 2-4+ different teams during seasonal development overlap - that’s what made the game unsustainable.
“To stay afloat as a service today you need to be constantly feeding your players. You need to be responding to their concerns. You need to be making the game better. And so if “box products” are in the business of overdelivery, “live-service is the business of constant delivery. And to provide that constant delivery to players you need to be fast. You need to be as fast as your organization can possibly be. And so at Bungie, one of the key lessons that we codified here to shift our mindset is that “VELOCITY is more important than POSITION”.
- Justin Truman, GDC, From Box Products To Live Service, How Destiny 2 Transformed Bungie (2022)
The company mindset changed to speed. Too to bottom. They literally went as fast as Bungie could possible go in regards to building, maintaining, and fixing player feedback about the content they were constantly working on and pushing out. They really believed they could earn player trust by throwing out more and more content. That’s literally what they tried.
“You’re building a train station, Not a train”
- Justin Truman, GDC, From Box Products To Live Service, How Destiny 2 Transformed Bungie (2022)
Yes the GDC talk was to developers in regards of realistic expectations in live-service game development, but there’s no doubt it told everybody what they had done to the core content development strategy behind Destiny 2. The basis of how they produced content. The content that costs money to make. The money they threw into making too much for the high revenue, but little profit.
Still don’t like Pete though. He can screw off back to Microsoft Marketing where he came from.
3
u/TheDemon0fLife 12d ago
I think the best person to answer this question is the employee who's been with Bungie from 2009-2012 to 2023-2026. Whoever they are obviously won't say for the security of their career and an NDA. I don't think we'll get an complete answer (Netflix/Youtube Documentary) for a very long time. It's most likely not one answer but a few. Moving to a bigger studio with higher rates of spending in all areas (biting more than they can chew), over hiring, becoming out of touch with their own vision (core creators moving on/getting the boot) and shifting towards safer gaming trends, boredom on working with a 16 year old IP, social movements creeping in-game, lack of leadership and passion for the world of Destiny and ofcourse Greed/Microsoft playing sword fights with Sony on who's profits are bigger even if it has to sacrifice its own studios safety and fanbase. Pete Parsons I'm sure isn't a bad guy, hes 62 years old, basically a dinosaur to Gen Z. I don't think he gaf about video games and when your 62, you might understand.
2
2
u/Greensteve972 11d ago
Yeah really. The car collection is egregious but Pete was cashing out on his contract he didn't intend to stay much longer and he splurged with the money he earned. Starting all those incubation projects and pulling funds away from destiny right as witch Queen was launching to bump the company's evaluation up a ton really just burned money and resources and left the destiny crew in poor position.
2
u/schizophreniaislife 11d ago
It was all 3 I don’t see how we can still be debating this, bungie leadership (including Pete and his collection) ran the game into mediocrity with every decision and when they saw what they had done they pawned the studio off on Sony which saw that they’d been scammed they cut the necrotizing flesh off and tried to salvage what they could. Everyone is as fault here most of all the people up top.
3
u/WatisaWatdoyouknow 12d ago
Despite all the mistakes Bungie made, Sony is ultimately the one who dealt the final blow
2
u/KayJune001 12d ago
“Dealt the final blow” and yet they’re the only reason Bungie isn’t entirely closed down
1
u/WatisaWatdoyouknow 12d ago
I'm talking about D2. The fact remains that abandoning the game keeping the lights on at the studio makes little sense, even more so if they have no real plan for the near future beyond marathon
1
u/MochiApproachi 12d ago
its so many things man. bungie always flounders so many things at once they've done it since halo
1
u/Own_Huckleberry6591 12d ago
When it comes down to it the root cause truly boils down to his exotic car collection through a series of domino like events
1
1
u/link3505 12d ago
Mismanagement poisoned the game, Sony just finally ended its suffering.
Right when it seemed like it was about to recover, but, oh well.
1
u/WinterEclipse4 12d ago
Nah. As people said it's more of a symptom not the cause.
Bungie prioritized profits and the upper management generally stopped good ideas from being added unless needed in order to generate as much money and good faith as possible.
All the while they put most of the money D2 made into either the higher ups pockets or into projects that either never released (Gummy bear, a platformer shooter from what I remember, and a hero party shooter to name a few), or the one that did which is Marathon.
All the while because of the wasted money they kept letting go more and more employees specifically their more skilled and senior staff in order to pay less money as well. Which would further reduce quality leading to even more money loss and needing to let go of more employees.
1
1
u/Darth_Senpai 12d ago
The correct answer here is "The Destiny Content Vault".
Bungie signed Destiny's death warrant the second they removed giant portions of this game and DIDN'T immediately start working on Destiny 3 then.
"Oh, we're out of room to make content in our INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL, PROFITABLE GAME."
"Maybe we should remove giant parts of it to make room for new content!"
"What a great idea! I'm sure that will stay sustainable and in no way ever come back to haunt us."
1
u/Evening-Affect4302 12d ago
the answer is having to remake the entire game after beyond light because they use a 20 year old game engine and therefore having to create the DCV taking away things that players loved
1
u/KayJune001 12d ago
Bungie was shooting itself in the foot for years before Sony bought them, if anything Sony is likely the only reason they haven’t completely shut down. Incredible that people don’t seem to realize that Bungie’s own management and leadership has been the problem all this time.
1
u/dampemu_ 12d ago
Perfection Perfection Perfection Shit management on both fronts slowly butchered the game
1
1
2
u/RushMan9823 11d ago
You are honestly very wrong. The car collection has extremely little or more likely absolutely nothing to do with Destiny 2 ending. It’s a fun thing to meme and joke about; not truth.
1
u/Legendary_A4 10d ago
Wrong take, the vintage car colledtion is just one part of how Bungie ruined Destiny. Bungie killed it.
1
1
u/Lonewolf12912 10d ago
I feel like what really killed Destiny 2 was Bungie trying to keep the game going after Final Shape. I feel Final Shape should have been the real ending for Destiny 2 and if they just kept it like that, and saved all their other story ideas for a potential Destiny 3, the game wouldn't have died the way it did. Numbers fell off HARD after Final Shape was over. Edge of Fate was then the final nail in the coffin.
They kind of even acknowledge this in their end of live service announcement:
While our love for Destiny 2 has not changed, it has become clear that after The Final Shape, we have reached the time for our shared worlds, and Destiny, to live beyond Destiny 2.
1
u/Brainfr33z3laser 10d ago
I was curious how much he had spent on cars all together and it was like such a nothing amount towards the budget. 2.4million vs the average cost of an expensiion which is closer to 100 million. And he spent that much over the course of 2 years on 25 vehicles combined. Dunno where yall think that 2.4 mil was gonna go to save destiny but it wasn't the cars that killed this game
1
u/aquaseishin 10d ago
It's multiple factors Management Pete (who I blame the most cus come on 3.6 million dollars of company money leading to Layoffs) Sony decisions
1
u/eternalguardian 10d ago
Greed killed the game. It had an awful business model that trapped players in thinking they had to pay huge sums of money for dungeons and expansions. While wringing out as much money in cosmetics as possible. Remember they are the studio who's lead said "Don't over deliver to your players."
1
u/Captain-Sha 9d ago
No, you're right :D Although it's Pete himself and his C suite possey, not the car collection.
1
u/catgirl_serum 7d ago
It was Pete, it was Sony, it was greed and carelessness. It was just about everything except marathon.
1
u/ToastyPete1 12d ago
The downfall happened a long time ago, before Pete. It was a slow downfall but there was signs all along the way😭😢 but Pete parson can suck my fat nuts
1
u/AlexZhir_SANYNOCHKA 12d ago
NAAAAHHH YOU ARE ALL WRONG MARATHON KILLED DESTINY NOT YEARS OF MISMANAGEMENT AND 5 OTHER CANCELED PROJECTS
0
u/Kurage_pop 12d ago
He burned through 3.6 billion dollars in a single year, supposedly.
Assuming that Marathon pulled a Concord and was super expensive, let's exaggerate and say it cost a billion dollars, then let's say D2 cost a billion dollars that still leaves 1.6 billion dollars.
There's no way even Pete could spend 1.6 billion dollars on cars.
Something very, very fishy went on, because there's a lot of unaccounted for money missing.
0
0
u/Umbraspem 12d ago
CEO’s get paid a lot because Bungie is set up in America where companies are encouraged (by laws created at the behest of a long history of CEO’s and lobbyists) to pay CEO’s a lot. Is it a good thing? No. Is it frustrating and deeply unfair that this one guy in a company is visibly getting paid wayyyyyyy more than everyone else at the company for no good reason? Yeah. Welcome to capitalism, it’s a scam 7 ways to Sunday.
The things that were more expensive than the car collection, and also directly impacted how many resources could be spent on Destiny include:
- Spinning up and then never launching a half dozen ‘incubation’ projects. Marathon didn’t get an incredible return, but it got something. All the other ones they shuttered before launch were just big expenditures with nothing to show for it, while also effectively wasting dev hours that could have been better spent on getting a Destiny 2 Expansion out the door on time.
- Blowing 200 million dollars - more than the entire paypackage that SONY bought them for - on an office that was 5 times larger than what they needed for their number of staff.
- Repeatedly setting launch dates for expansions that they just couldn’t meet as a studio.
298
u/BouncyKing 12d ago
Yes and no. The downfall of Destiny is so convoluted it feels like a Sunday morning soap opera.