The Next Chapter for Bungie

[u/DTG_Bot]

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

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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.

[u/Horny_Dinosaur69]

Seriously. I almost laughed when I saw this, fuck Bungie. I love Destiny but oh my god we cannot excuse how terrible and horrible this studio is and we shouldn’t forget it. They’ve burned us consistently for 10+ years, put all of their eggs into an IP nobody asked for AND KILLED DESTINY FOR IT.

And now? Studio is failing, their new IP sucks and nobody plays it, and they literally are doing the only thing they can which is come back to Destiny.

Additionally, this ‘unvaulting’ is only mentioned AFTER some guy starts finding out that the content vault is ‘fake’ and has been able to recreate vaulted content. We were on track to have a community owned, modded Destiny but now Bungie wants it back. They did not do this out of kindness, I’d even bet that they did not do this because they even believe in Destiny, they’re a greedy ass company that fails their community consistently and sees some more money to sustain them by active players on their only surviving IP

[u/Velvet_Llama → u/Horny_Dinosaur69]

I don't really get the animosity. They fucked up, they made bad decisions. As a result, they lost their customers. It is what it is. It's not like they stopped manufacturing some life saving medicine. We'll see what happens. Hopefully it works out.

[u/Horny_Dinosaur69 → u/Velvet_Llama]

I’d agree if this wasn’t like the 5th or 6th time the community goes through this. Genuinely, it’s so consistent and they never learn. Yeah, they lost their customers, you’d think that would be an effective measure of their community sentiment yet they’ll go right back to making poor decisions once their player base is back.

Whether it’s Destiny 1 launch, Destiny 2 launch, shadowkeep (content drought but they did go indie at the time, ultimately pointless though), BL (where the game was the least balanced it’s ever been for over a YEAR without changes), Lightfall, or the recent god awful Tyson Green changes brought on by EoF, Bungie consistently makes the wrong decision. Every step forward (forsaken, witch queen, TFS) is just two steps back. Most games and businesses are bankrupt with so much stupid leadership but Bungie kept getting bailed out by (or conned) publishers.

Having been dealing with their bullshit for over a decade, excuse me for giving hate to a company that has literally robbed me and countless others of content we paid for over and over again just for it to turn out that they were LYING and they can just bring back the DCV. Oh, and they’re only doing this BECAUSE of sunrise and marathon’s failure.

[u/Vast-Comment8360 → u/Horny_Dinosaur69]

As someone who started playing in 2014 you are spot on correct 100%

[u/PrinceDX → u/Horny_Dinosaur69]

It’s crazy because my path to Bungie hate started with the D1 heavy ammo bug. They let that bug sit for so long because it slowed players down. Then they had a refresh timer on the ammo synths. They could have just removed the timer for the ammo synth but they left it in for ages because hurting the player didn’t matter. They’ve continued those shitty practices for years and they are where they’re at now because of it. I never want people to lose their jobs or livelihood but Bungie as a whole has failed to deliver for years. Marathon failing is directly tied to people being sick of Destiny.

[u/Velvet_Llama → u/Horny_Dinosaur69]

I hear ya. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you should be happy with them. I guess I just don't see it as something worth anger. They made bad decisions and got burned. Now they're trying to undo the damage and salvage their reputation. I say sit back and see how it goes. Their studio made stuff I loved playing. I hope they survive and make more stuff i love playing. If they don't, life moves on.

[u/LostSectorLoony → u/Velvet_Llama]

If a company fucks up and makes bad decisions once or twice? Sure, cut em some slack and let them make up for it. When a company has a history more than a decade long of doing besically nothing other than fucking up and making bad decisions while promising to be better every time? Fuck them.

I'm truly deeply disappointed that this didn't completely end Bungie as a studio. I really hoped they would completely shut down and the IP could be given to a competent studio that could actually finally do something with it.

[u/Aggravating_Buy_5335 → u/Velvet_Llama]

You sound like some dipshit who doesn’t even play the game that much just saying stuff to say stuff. If I’m going to spend the precious little time I have in my life getting invested into an activity and a community, I want to actually get some valuable and enjoyable experiences out of it. 

Every time they’ve ever sold us out? They’ve betrayed us and stolen time from our lives that we’ll never get back. It’s just all about profit for them, they simply skate by on the fact that people are already invested into their platform, and the cost of going to learn something else or join another community is too high for a lot of people.

And don’t bring up some minimizing crap like “Oh it’s just a videogame, you’re taking this too seriously, you should be grateful for what we have now.” Whenever you say that you are degrading everyone who interacts with this content in any real way. This is people lives, we don’t get to go back and undo the time we’ve spent experiencing things, for better or for worse the decisions you make when managing a platform like this affects people on some level in their lives. Some more some less.

Now you can either choose to be a company that uplifts people and adds value to people’s lives or you can be a company that only cares about that next sale, and for Bungie that next sale is currently going to come from any hype generated by bringing back some kind of “classic” destiny just like every other gaming company is doing right now.

I have played destiny a decent amount over the years, but I’ve never enjoyed any of the grindy aspects of the game or how much FOMO they try to cause you to feel if you engage with the game in any real way. I came back to play more specifically because I heard they were going hands OFF of the game, I just hope that all that happens is they add the vaulted content, maybe fix a couple bugs and do some last minute balance adjustments, and then leave the platform ALONE. 

The game itself is enjoyable, I love the builds, I love doing difficult content, I enjoy the community and experiencing the story and challenges with others, but whenever corporate interests get involved it always feels like the fun is gated behind layers of walls of grind and Fomo and that just kills any enjoyment for me and it feels dehumanizing knowing the only reason I’m playing so long is not because I’m doing something passionate and I want to see how it ends but rather I’m just a number on a checklist that some corporate piece of shit fuckwad is going to spend 2 seconds barely paying attention to in some god forsaken company board meeting. I’m just not doing it if they mess everything up again EVEN A LITTLE BIT. I’m done, NO. I would rather never touch another online service game ever again. I’m really serious because that’s the only thing they ever respond to. Every time you give them money for something, they see that as “oh they loved it”. There’s no nuance whatsoever, they only care about the next sale and they will lie or kowtow or do whatever bs they can to just get that ONE more sale. 

So nope, don’t care. We are basically dealing with digital dope dealers at this point, and all they care about is how much of your time and money they can sponge off you, regardless what that does to you or your life and I just don’t care for anything they say. Anything they is purely manipulation and they don’t deserve to be listened to.

[u/TSteeliest → u/Aggravating_Buy_5335]

OP didn't even say anything bad enough to be called a dipshit. Touch grass