Right after Bungie announced that they were stopping the live service updates for Destiny 2, some news broke that has made the situation a whole lot worse.
According to Jason Schrier, a games journalist for Bloomberg (and one with a good track record of accurate reporting, particularly with the Destiny stuff), mass layoffs are inbound at Bungie and to make it even worse, Destiny 3 (or any Destiny project for that matter) has NOT been greenlit by Sony.
No Destiny 3 Plans
So, not only Jason Schrier but also Paul Tassi, confirmed that according to their sources at Bungie, there is no current plan for Destiny 3 and that all resources are being pooled into Marathon at this time.
Mass layoffs are inbound and according to reports, the team at Bungie i.e. the majority of the developers who work on the game, were only informed of the end of service announcement, right before it went live to the public. According to Jason Schrier, at a townhall shortly after the announcement to end service for Destiny 2, the staff asked about layoffs and the leadership dodged the questions.
I can’t help but feel that this is literally the most stupid decision Sony have made yet – and yes I’m including their decision to release Concord.
How can they possibly think that Destiny 3 isn’t a safe bet? But Marathon is?
Do they not see the overall gaming community sentiment towards that game? Do they not see the player counts?
How can you possible believe that a hardcore niche game (albeit a great game for it’s genre) like Marathon would be a better investment than a Destiny 3 that would draw in millions of players?
Sony is literally saying… “A proven market? A proven product?”
“Nah, sod that, let’s focus all our efforts on a niche hardcore game that barely has the player count of Destiny 2’s lowest lows only 2 months after it’s launch!”
It’s just insane to me that Marathon, that has had such a turbulent development and an awful run up to launch, followed by what can only be described as a disasterous launch for a AAA studio of Bungie’s calibre.
Now don’t get me wrong, Marathon is a good game. I played it for a bit (maybe 1.5 hours) and I liked it. However, none of my friends did – some didn’t like the art style, some didn’t like the difficulty….but the one thing that none of my friends liked was the genre.
Extraction shooters are niche and hardcore – Arc Raiders is the anomoly here, not the norm… and even they are having issues holding on to a player base.
Marathon is just not it. It’s a good game. But it’s not Destiny.
It just feels like yet again, another bullshit corporate decision based on profit margins instead of a good understanding of the gaming industry and the communities of the IPs they hold.
What a real slap in the face to all Destiny players.