Bungie Aims for a Fresh Start After Acknowledging Past Missteps: “We Lost Trust and Focus on What Matters Most”
Bungie was acquired by Sony for $3.6 billion during the height of the COVID gaming boom, but things have taken a downturn since then. Aside from a few highlights, like the Destiny 2: The Final Shape expansion that wrapped up over a decade of storytelling, the studio has struggled with reported revenue declines and significant layoffs. This has left Destiny 2 in a precarious state and the recently launched Marathon in dire need of support. Change is essential, and it’s beginning now.
This message was conveyed in a recent video titled “The Next Chapter for Bungie,” released on September 21. In it, new studio head Poria Torkan and Marathon GM Josh Deane discuss the studio’s challenges and pledge to usher in a new era of accountability, starting with rebuilding trust among long-time fans.
“Bungie has been creating games for over 30 years and we have welcomed the communities that have formed around them,” they stated in a blog post. “In recent years, we lost sight of that, leading to real consequences. We lost trust, we lost incredible colleagues, and we lost focus on what matters most: our players. As a new leadership team, we must take responsibility for that. We’re not just listening to feedback; we understand your disappointment. We’re not asking you to trust our words today. We know that trust must be earned through the quality of our games, the decisions we make, and our consistent engagement with players.”
The initial changes are modest. There are no drastic moves like ending Marathon or launching Destiny 3. Instead, Bungie is committed to enhancing Destiny 2 by reintroducing old content that was vaulted years ago, aiming for a more complete version of the game. For Marathon, the studio is focused on delivering a PvE mode by December to revitalize the live-service extraction shooter, which has struggled just six months post-launch.
“This is a pivotal time for Bungie,” the blog post continued. “Our future hinges on making clear choices about our focus, delivering on our promises, and being transparent about our successes and failures. Stability doesn’t mean lowering our ambitions; it means concentrating on what you want to see from us and ensuring our vision aligns with reality. Bringing this new Bungie to life requires us to prioritize players in everything we do. We need to rediscover how to create games we want to play, with you at the center.”
This effort to reset relations with fans comes just months after the decision to halt new content for Destiny 2 and layoffs that affected around 300 employees. Bungie reportedly has no new projects currently greenlit, but whatever the studio embarks on next, it will be a fundamentally different entity from the one Sony acquired four years ago. Whether this transformation will lead to improvement or decline remains to be seen.
