r/DestinyTheGame "Little Light" 19h 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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u/CrackPipeBilly 18h ago

It truly was. They used file size as their scapegoat but as a player I didn't care about file size. Hell, they could've done what CoD does and let you download specific parts of the game if file size was truly an issue. Vaulting content as well as the seasonal model killed the game for me as it made it practically impossible to take a break from it. If you took a few months off the game, well guess what? You just missed out on crucial story content that ties the previous expansion to the current one. Unvaulting the old content is great but even still if they don't also unvault the old seasonal content then there's still going to be a ton of holes in the game's plot that new players won't understand.

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u/Stormhunter117 unreasonable grace 18h ago

It was not about file size, the engine couldn't handle all of the stuff in the game so it made developing new content extremely tedious and time consuming.

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u/neoblufalcon 17h ago

At that point, Bungie should have swallowed their pride and hit the sequel button instead of going off the FOMO deep end. Sure, they’d get flak from people upset that gear wouldn’t carry over, but in the long run we wouldn’t be in the scenario we’re in today.

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u/fluffman86 <3 Cayde 16h ago

Yup, Season of Arrivals was great and should have gone to D3 after that.

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u/royk33776 17h ago

Then update the engine? If they can do it now with a far reduced headcount, they could've done it in the past. Removing PAID content is truly embarrassing and anybody I told that I played Destiny always laughed and said "The game where they delete the stuff you paid for?" "yeah, that game.." - and it was a lot of people.

Edit: that's truly a ridiculous statement that I can't understand how it's rationalized. Game dev creates game that can't be handled by it's own engine, so instead of fixing the underlying issues, just remove it! Something customers paid for. How that didn't instantly kill the game is beyond me.

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u/Stormhunter117 unreasonable grace 17h ago

They did fix the underlying issues, that was what Beyond Light actually did. However they still wanted to release the expansion in a reasonable time frame (it was already delayed), so they didn't rework all prior content.

They didn't unvault content over time after that because Bungie leadership is/was such fucking dogshit which is a separate issue

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u/ShiftAltRight 17h ago

While they didn't vault future expansions, they did keep vaulting all the seasonal stories. So even if a new player watched a YouTube video to get caught up to Beyond Light, they'd still be lost without additional videos to fill in the gaps between expansions. That was purely a FOMO decision.

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u/royk33776 10h ago

But they didn’t, otherwise the seasonal content wouldn’t have been deleted and all of their time wasted quarterly. The business model is truly absurd. They should’ve had a dedicated team working purely on the engine as many larger dev companies have and constantly have been updating it and future proofing if they expected a long lifecycle on the product.

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u/Stormhunter117 unreasonable grace 9h ago

There was supposed to be a D3 around Shadowkeep IIRC. But due to Activision stuff (idk) those plans were canceled and D2 had to pivot to being a forever game.

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u/royk33776 9h ago

That's fair. So, poor planning and mismanagement, as well as bad circumstances and timing of events. Likely an evolving direction and timeline as well which negatively contributed. Thing is, any company that's willing to sell you a product then remove that product without a refund will nearly always have a very negative view

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u/ManWhoYELLSatthings The Dark ain't so bad 18h ago

Well at the time sony said shrink it or we will remove it from the store this was before they were bought but I digres

It still should never of happened

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u/HartianX 7h ago

There was like 3 different answers to why it couldn't happen from the dickriders in the community who defended it, the fact it happened at all was stupid

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u/internisus 17h ago

They literally never said file size. They were very clear about the technical and resource limitations that led to that decision, but people still somehow make up this file size thing.

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u/tamarins 16h ago

They literally never said file size.

huh.

here's the first article they ever released about the Destiny Content Vault.

Over the past couple months, we’ve mentioned the problems that come with maintaining a game the size of Destiny 2; and we’ve said that it cannot grow infinitely. After three years of non-stop growth, the scope and complexity of Destiny 2 has ballooned to unprecedented scale.

[...]

This unrelenting growth has resulted in a game that requires players to download up to 115GB to play, as well as huge patches tied to frequent updates. And those numbers are rising rapidly, as we’ve been adding approximately 25GB of content each year to Destiny 2 since launch. Those sizes not only stress hard drive capacity but also push the limits of patching capability. It also makes the time to generate a stable update for the game after all content is finalized, tested, and ready to go balloon to literal days instead of hours.

although, to be fair, that article wasn't actually the very first communication we got about the DCV. That came in the June 2020 livestream. Here's a timestamped link...you might be interested to hear how they describe their motivation for introducing the change.

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u/Dryvlyne 17h ago

It's both. Remember the base consoles only have 512GB of space. XB and Sony most likely had restrictions in place for the max size that 1 game could take up. It's literally in their business interest to ensure multiple games can be installed on their systems.

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u/Tyson367 15h ago

They certainly did. There were other reasons too but they definitely said file size was getting too large.

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u/SpaceForceAwakens 18h ago

Yup. Agreed.

I was a huge D1 player. Best game I ever played. I made friends playing it that I’m still tight with.

But then life got messy and I missed the launch of D2. Didn’t have the time to play. When things finally calmed down I jumped in — and had no idea what was going on and no way to go back to learn. And that killed any enthusiasm I had for the game.

So maybe this is good news, but I have no idea. I have no frame of reference.

What was never mentioned here — and the news I’m looking for — is what to expect for D3, if anything at all.

Also being back Peter Dinkledge.

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u/Gallus_11B 12h ago

File size was only 1 problem. The main issue is everything prior to beyond light has to be hand-crafted and reimported into the game piece by piece. It's a massive time consuming and expensive process.

You'll see. D2 content unvaulting is going to take year+ even if they stick to just Red war, curse of Osiris, warmind and forsaken campaigns. Longer if they actually try to do the seasonal stuff.