It has come to light that Destiny’s musical composers Michael Salvatori and Michale Sechrist are among the employees who left Bungie.
As confirmed by DestinyBulletin on Twitter, Michael Salvatori has updated the biography on his website to say “GONE FISHIN’ :)”
Subsequently, Twitter user LastCityRadio also took note that Michael Sechrist has updated the About page on his website to say “GONE FISHIN’ with SALVATORI…”
It’s certainly an interesting way to indicate that they have left the company. In both cases, the two Michaels have omitted mention of their previous work at Bungie from their websites.
We don’t know if GONE FISHIN’ is some inside joke or code, but it is likely that the two left with non compete clauses. So they may simply be confirming that they won’t be working in the near future because of such clauses.
Yesterday, we did report on Bungie firing a number of employees. This is based on a report from Jason Schreier, but Bungie has yet to confirm the news. So we are being careful in our reportage, as we don’t have official confirmation if the two Michaels were fired, or left voluntarily, or exited the company under different conditions.
Of course, this comes under the context that Sony had acquired the studio, and recently went through what seems to be a bit of internal turmoil after that. Connie Booth’s exit from PlayStation was confirmed days after the news spread, and Jim Ryan had himself recently revealed plans to retire.
Fans are rightly upset about the new of Salvatori’s exit. Michael Salvatori did composing work on every Halo and Destiny game made by Bungie. But we have to also bring up something else here.
In 2020, Salvatori, alongside Marty O’Donnell, sued Bungie while they were employees in the company. This dispute had arisen over O’Donnell and Salvatori claiming that they were owed more in royalties. O’Donnell and Salvatori formed their own company to establish a licensing agreement for this work, as opposed to merely doing it as work for hire under Bungie.
That suit was ‘amicably resolved’ just last April, but it would stand to reason that Bungie would not be inclined to retain Salvatori’s services.
If Bungie did fire both Salvatori and Sechrist, we are likely to hear about more firings of even more high profile Bungie employees. It’s up to Bungie and Sony when they decide to officially confirm they had cut staff down.
