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Last year, Bungie announced a very late delay for Destiny 2's upcoming expansion, The Final Shape, a decision that also brought about some high-profile lay-offs at the company due to players dropping off of the game due to the poor reception to the Lightfall expansion. As it turns out, Sony isn't entirely pleased with the situation over at its newly acquired studio, with the PlayStation President calling on the studio's management to take more accountability.
Sony acquired Bungie in 2022 for a grand total of $3.6 billion, at a time when PlayStation was going to go all-in on live service games with a total of 12 games planned. A year later, that number of live service projects was cut down to six as the realities of building a large-scale live service game began to set in.
Bungie was considered to be the best live service studio around at the time of the acquisition, which came shortly after the launch of the hugely successful Witch Queen expansion for Destiny 2. Unfortunately, the next expansion, Lightfall, contained a campaign largely based on filler content that barely moved the story forward and many players dropped off the game relatively quickly. Shortly after announcing layoffs in late 2023, it was reported that Bungie was missing its revenue targets by as much as 45 percent for 2023.
The end result here is that employees were punished, with a small percentage of the Destiny team being let go as Bungie downsized to improve its financial outlook. It is believed that this was done in hopes of avoiding a Sony takeover. Under the current acquisition agreement, Bungie is allowed to operate more independently but should certain financial targets be missed, then Sony will have the right to step in and put its own executives in charge of the studio.
That scenario is looming over Bungie again this week. During Sony's recent earnings report, PlayStation President, Hiroki Totoki, stated that while he was impressed with Bungie's development teams during a visit to the studio, there is “room for improvement” on the business side.
“I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with management, and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services. However, I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines. I hope to continue the dialogue and come up with some good solutions”.
At this point, Bungie's management has a lot riding on The Final Shape expansion, which is due to launch in June after several months of delay. This delay has had a knock-on effect, with seasonal content having to be stretched out and new content having to be planned to fill the gaps. This next expansion will wrap up Destiny's ‘Light & Darkness' saga, which kicked off back in 2014 with the launch of the original game. After this, Bungie will shift to a new story and a new seasonal content model.
Bungie is also targeting 2025 for the launch of Marathon, its new extraction-based PvP shooter, which will give Bungie a much-needed additional revenue stream outside of Destiny, which has been the studio's only game since leaving the Halo series behind.
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KitGuru Says: Lightfall was a huge letdown for many players and many features, such as the in-game group finder to make it easier for players to experience content like raids, faced delays in the months following its release. I do hope that The Final Shape can provide a satisfying conclusion but I don't see myself returning to Destiny for its next saga. It will certainly be interesting to see how many long-term players want to stick around for Destiny's next phase, although with the story shifting, it could open the door for new players to finally jump into the game without getting lost due to how bloated Destiny 2 is in its current form.
