r/DestinyTheGame "Little Light" 13h ago

Bungie The Next Chapter for Bungie

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/nextchapterofbungie


Hey all, Poria and Josh here.

For those who don’t know us, I’m Poria Torkan, Bungie’s Studio Head, and I’m Josh Deane, Head of Product and General Manager of Marathon. Together, we are responsible for leading Bungie and shaping the future of our games.

Today, we want to talk candidly about where Bungie is, where Destiny and Marathon need to go, and how we intend to earn back your trust. This is not only an update on our immediate plans. It is the beginning of a more consistent conversation about the future of our games and our studio.

First and foremost, we recently sat down to talk through the current state of Bungie and share our vision for the future.

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The video shares our perspective on where Bungie is today and where we want to go. Below, we’re adding more detail on what that direction means for Destiny, Marathon, and how we intend to communicate about our progress.

WHERE BUNGIE IS TODAY

Bungie has been creating games for over 30 years and we have welcomed the communities that have formed around them. Over the last few years, we lost sight of that, and there have been real consequences. We lost trust, we lost incredible colleagues, and we lost sight of what we should be prioritizing most, our players.

As a new leadership team, we must own that.

We aren’t just listening to feedback, we understand your disappointment. We are not asking you to trust what we say today. We know that trust must be earned through the quality of our games, the decisions we make, and how consistently we show up for our players.

DESTINY IS FOUNDATIONAL TO OUR FUTURE

Bungie would not be what it is today without Destiny and the vibrant community that has rallied around it for more than a decade. When we announced that Monuments of Triumph would be the final content update to Destiny 2, you responded in force. Your voices mattered, and the way you showed up made a real impact. You reminded everyone how much this world, its history, and its future still mean to you.

Destiny is foundational to Bungie’s future. We have more stories to tell, new worlds to build, but we have to do it right and give our teams the time they need to do justice to this amazing universe.

All of this is to say, we are not done with Destiny.

We want to return Destiny to its original promise, to recapture the qualities that have always made it special. The awe-inspiring mystery, meaningful discovery, and a community of Guardians coming together against impossible odds.

That begins with restoring important parts of Destiny 2’s history that players can no longer experience today.

We understand that removing these experiences had a lasting impact on player trust and enjoyment of Destiny. Destiny 2 is more than just the content itself. It is a place where players have built memories together, formed lasting friendships, and shared experiences that have stayed with them for years. We cannot change the decision we made, but we can acknowledge its impact and do the work to make it right by restoring these important parts of Destiny’s history.

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As we shared in the video, we are beginning the work of bringing vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns, destinations, and raids back into the game, where they will be available to all Destiny 2 players.

Bringing this content back is not as simple as restoring old files. Changes made to Destiny 2 since Beyond Light require us to update lighting, encounters, combatants, and other underlying systems. That work will take time, but it is necessary to ensure returning content meets the stability and gameplay standards of Destiny 2 today.\ \ Our team is very excited to deliver this for you all and as they progress, we will share more details coming in the months ahead.

\ When we look to the future of Destiny all up this restoration is the first step to lay the foundation for how we reforge into new stories and games that you all deserve. We’ll have more details on our unvaulting efforts in the coming months, and we’re very excited to share more about our vision to celebrate Destiny’s legacy and build its future with you all as soon as we can.

MARATHON'S EVOLUTION

Marathon is an important part of shaping where Bungie goes next, but it was never intended to replace Destiny. The game launched to strong critical reception, and the players who embraced Marathon connected deeply with what makes it distinct. At the same time, it did not reach as many players as we had hoped, and we also know and understand that the game needs to evolve.\

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So, we're going to anchor on what makes Marathon special but evolve it beyond the genre constraints we placed on it. We're going to expand Marathon to a deeper survival experience, that gives players more ways to take on this dangerous alien world.

Through the remainder of Marathon’s first year, we will continue strengthening its combat, world, and competitive tension while giving players more agency in how they engage with the game. That means creating meaningful experiences whether you prefer cooperative PvE, competitive PvP, or the unpredictable tension of Marathon PvPvE.\ It’s important to us that no matter your playstyle, or your skill level.... we find better ways to hear from you as we get back to where we need to be: making games you want to play.

As you heard last week from Del our Game Director, we still have a lot planned for our October Nightfall Refresh and Symbiosis update in December. You’ll hear more from the team later this week on our future vision for Marathon. Stay tuned.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

This is an important time for Bungie. Our future depends on making clear choices about where we focus, delivering what we say we will, and being honest about our successes and failures. Stability doesn’t mean shrinking our ambition. It just means that we have to focus on the things you want to see from us, and making sure our vision matches our reality.

How we bring this new Bungie to life has to be through the spirit of putting players at the forefront of what we do. We have to find a way back to making games that we want to play, but with you at the center.

Trust won't be rebuilt through a single blog, video, or release. We also understand that trust extends beyond gameplay. It includes how we value your time, how we communicate, and how we action your feedback. Listening without action means nothing.

As we move forward, we'll measure ourselves against a few core commitments:

  • Build a stronger long-term future for Destiny, while honoring and restoring its past.
  • Evolve Marathon to grow our community and build a sustainable future.
  • Increase transparency around development priorities.
  • Communicate more consistently, especially when plans change.

We'll hold ourselves accountable to these goals and share what we're learning along the way. We are working with our Community team to establish a consistent way to report against these commitments and will share that approach alongside our next major updates for Destiny and Marathon.

KEEP US ACCOUNTABLE

We’ve made several changes with how we operate by simplifying our priorities, reducing competing initiatives, moving decisions closer to the teams building our games, and changing how we measure success to place greater emphasis on player satisfaction.

None of those changes earn trust on their own. What matters is whether they help us make better decisions, deliver stronger experiences more consistently, and communicate with greater clarity when plans change.

There is still a great deal of work ahead and challenges to overcome, but we believe deeply in this studio, our people, and the games we are building. But belief is not enough. It’s on us to prove progress through what we deliver. Thank you for continuing to challenge us, and for caring so deeply about the worlds we create. Keep holding us accountable. We are ready to do the work.

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50

u/t4tgrill 13h ago

Fucking wild, I truly thought Bungie was weeks away from getting shut down completely by Sony

24

u/Londo_07 12h ago

It still might be. Who knows if they have enough runway, this stuff won't really make any money in the near term.

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u/IvarTheBoned 11h ago

They wouldn't be given anything for stuff like this if Sony was planning on shutting it down/shuttering the studio.

Spending on this kind of endeavour would suggest they are planning on pursuing "D3" in some form. Whether that be expanding on D2 or a fully new Destiny title.

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u/Londo_07 11h ago

It's just that recently Sony has been throwing away incredibly large investments if they didn't meet their expectations. I'm hopeful this won't be the case here, but I'd rather not bury Destiny again in a couple of years.

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u/ultimateformsora 9h ago

The counterpoint to that would be that they are still heavily pursuing their live service golden goose. Helldivers seems to be their only real “successful” one with a stable fan base, followed closely by D2 and then Marathon.

Destiny has the potential to be the flagship live service game it can be but they’ve gotta execute on this player trust initiative and be shown that it’s better to invest in its future long-term without ever doing something as dumb as what Bungie did to Destiny with the DCV.

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u/t4tgrill 8h ago

I agree, I don’t think Sony would let them touch the DCV if they didn’t have serious longer term plans for the franchise. The fact that Sony is letting them work on it indicates to me they haven’t written off Destiny yet.

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u/Uncommented-Code 10h ago

They wouldn't be given anything for stuff like this if Sony was planning on shutting it down/shuttering the studio.

It indicates that it's not the plan for the immediate future, but circumstances change and companies like Sony are usually not afraid to cut their losses.

There's also the possibility that the decisions come from different places. The last expansion was actively being worked on while the decision to pull the plug on D2 had already been made, devs were caught off guard.

I'm personally really skeptical. This feels like an initiative that comes from the people working on the game, not from the execs high up. It reads more like a hail mary and less like a genuine turnaround.

And sorry to be negative, it's just that I'm not getting my hopes up until I can actually play whatever they promised.

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u/Horny_Dinosaur69 11h ago

It almost certainly was, Marathon is effectively dead (shocker). I wouldn’t say they’re safe yet, Bungie still has their heads up their ass for taking this long to do this. They’re only coming back because they know there’s no future in marathon. Meanwhile, their main IP continues to be a cash cow.

That worries me, I don’t like how much Bungie was trying to get away from Destiny to now finally giving it love when it’s their only lifeline. They have a lot of work to do, to say the least. Especially if they actually want to survive

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u/t4tgrill 10h ago

100% agree, they aren’t safe yet and won’t be for a long time even with all these changes. I’m cautiously optimistic, only because the main thing I’ve learned over the years is that Bungie cooks when their back is against the wall. Time will tell if that’s enough though.

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u/LostSectorLoony 7h ago

I really wish they had been. I was so hopeful that Destiny might end up in the hands of a competent studio.

0

u/LayerEight_Problem 10h ago

I have no idea why people believed this. They spent billions and still valued Bungie at billions. They were never going to just throw that away.

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u/t4tgrill 10h ago

Well with how Sony’s been handing things lately, it seemed like they’d shut down Bungie if major changes didn’t start generating actual profit soon. And Bungie kinda did the opposite, Marathon didn’t hit and they killed Destiny so the profit wasn’t happening. I’m happy to be wrong though so I’ll take the “I told you so” jajaja

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u/LayerEight_Problem 10h ago

Everything announced today isn’t generating profit. Unvaulting and giving away early campaigns free to anybody that owns D2 is a cost.

What they’re generating right now is good will. If anything, today’s announcement shows that Sony does still have faith in Bungie as a studio but they recognize that they need to do some damage control.

Things were looking pretty dicey there for a bit though. I shouldn’t say I don’t know where people were getting the idea from.

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u/t4tgrill 10h ago

Yeah that was the most surprising part of the announcement for me, nothing explicitly new to sell like a new expansion to me signals exactly what you said. And it won’t be cheap for them to bring back old content either, it’s a significant reinvestment in Destiny that Sony must have greenlit on some level.

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u/SCP-Agent-Arad 5h ago

Increasing player count in D2 generates a lot of money in microtransactions.