Bungie has shared an official message about the state of their signature live service franchise, Destiny.
On the official Destiny 2 Twitter account, they shared this statement:
“We know that recent changes at Bungie have created uncertainty surrounding the future of Destiny.
Rest assured we remain committed to Destiny, to supporting our community with transparency, and to delivering regular updates about the game.
We’ll be talking with you all about the future of Destiny and plans for our next multi-year journey soon. Once we plant a flag for the date, we’ll let you all know.
Thank you for your patience, and we’ll see you again soon.”
This message comes a day after Hiroki Totoki, Sony CFO and Chairman of PlayStation, actually explained the situation with Bungie to one of Sony’s investors, in the Q&A of their latest financial meeting. It also comes a little over a week after Bungie revealed that they would be undergoing severe reorganization.
Bungie CEO Pete Parsons and Hiroki Totoki essentially shared the same message. Bungie as a whole will lose 1/3rds of its staff, with 220 employees laid off, and 155 to be integrated into Sony Interactive Entertainment. Some of the 155 will be forming a new studio, dedicated to one of Bungie’s projects in incubation.
This is all certainly a bitter pill to swallow for both Destiny’s players and their developers. In light of this, we cannot forget that there are still 800 + people who will still be working at Bungie. As Totoki explained, they will be dedicated to continuing support for Destiny 2, as well as to release Bungie’s first original IP in decades, their reboot of Marathon.
We had reported extensively on many rumors going on around Bungie and their games, but we’ll pass on that here. Even if it feels like we now have a lot of insider information on the company and Sony, Bungie has committed to making an official communication on their future.
That is when we will actually know what they plan to do, and how things will play out moving forward. We had expressed our empathy for the developers set to leave Bungie, but it seems necessary to point out that the video game industry at a whole seems to be going through this phase were they have to readjust their businesses.
We think there’s still reason to hope for Bungie’s future, and it’s clear Bungie wants their fans to believe that, too. We will certainly be waiting to see what they have to tell us when the time is right.
