Bungie and Activision End Destiny Partnership
Bungie has announced that it has acquired the publishing rights to the Destiny franchise from Activision. According to a post on the studio’s website, “The planned transition process is already underway in its early stages, with Bungie and Activision both committed to making sure the handoff is as seamless as possible.” The post mentions that Bungie will self-publish the series moving forward.
It seems like players won’t notice any immediate differences with Destiny 2’s operation as the Bellevue-based studio sets out on its own. Bungie will “continue to deliver on the existing Destiny roadmap,” and will have “some exciting announcements about what lies beyond.”
One of the first questions that players had is how the news will affect the PC version of Destiny 2, which is distributed exclusively through Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher (Blizzard is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc.) In a tweet, Blizzard Customer Service said that the game will still “receive full support,” but it’s not clear at the moment if that arrangement could change in the future.
Destiny has followed an interesting trajectory since the series launched in 2014. The original release didn’t deliver on all of its promise out of the gate, but fans were extremely happy with the state of the game when Destiny: The Taken King launched a year later. Destiny 2 curiously adhered to the same pattern: the player base was underwhelmed with the version released in 2017, but felt that last year’s Destiny 2: Forsaken improved the game immensely.
A post-launch implementation of microtransactions and frequent DLC releases have frustrated some players as well, so it will be fascinating to see how Bungie fares as the studio takes full control of its shared-world shooter.
Kyle Flory
Kyle is a lifelong gamer and writer who studied English at Cal State San Bernardino. He has been a PlayStation fan since the release of Sony's original console and puts most of his game time in on his PS5. He loves Metal Gear Solid, and is currently working on getting platinum trophies for every game in the series.
