One month after a major round of layoffs impacted roughly 100 Bungie employees of 1,200, those remaining at the Destiny developer say the cuts, as well as other cost-cutting measures, came alongside an apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover.
Imagine buying your freedom from Microsoft only to get acquired by Sony a decade later. I think hindsight being 20/20 they may have just been better off continuing on with Microsoft.
Edit: I’d like to revise my previous position. This is why all devs and studio employees should follow the trend and UNIONIZE IMMEDIATELY.
Under Phil I think they’d be allowed a level of creative freedom but I can’t blame them for wanting to leave under Mattrick; he would have kept them on the Halo hamster wheel forever.
Yeah, I totally understand that. I suppose I am biased because I only played the first Destiny game, and to be honest it just always struck me as the Disney Star Wars version of Halo. It just lacked the compelling story elements and refinement of the early Halo games to me, so even back then I wondered if it was worth it for Bungie to separate from Microsoft.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out that’s for sure. This smells to me like an attempt to lock Destiny in as a Sony exclusive perhaps. So, the irony is that exactly what Bungie was trying to avoid in large part by splitting from Microsoft may end up happening anyway…
Their fate is even sadder in my view, they’re now the live service aid studio. Hopefully Jim Ryan’s replacement can fix that because churning out live service games sounds like a horrible idea
Imagine buying your freedom from Microsoft only to get acquired by Sony a decade later. I think hindsight being 20/20 they may have just been better off continuing on with Microsoft.
Edit: I’d like to revise my previous position. This is why all devs and studio employees should follow the trend and UNIONIZE IMMEDIATELY.
Under Phil I think they’d be allowed a level of creative freedom but I can’t blame them for wanting to leave under Mattrick; he would have kept them on the Halo hamster wheel forever.
Yea so they got their freedom and made a Halo clone MMO.
Yeah, I totally understand that. I suppose I am biased because I only played the first Destiny game, and to be honest it just always struck me as the Disney Star Wars version of Halo. It just lacked the compelling story elements and refinement of the early Halo games to me, so even back then I wondered if it was worth it for Bungie to separate from Microsoft.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out that’s for sure. This smells to me like an attempt to lock Destiny in as a Sony exclusive perhaps. So, the irony is that exactly what Bungie was trying to avoid in large part by splitting from Microsoft may end up happening anyway…
Their fate is even sadder in my view, they’re now the live service aid studio. Hopefully Jim Ryan’s replacement can fix that because churning out live service games sounds like a horrible idea