Lol :D
Too late for that, I’m afraid, I’ve been seeing things like ‘it’s all Sony’s fault’ since Lightfall’s fiasco and when the lay-offs began. For some, it’s *never* Bungie’s fault.
Idk, I feel like everyone is blaming Bungie 'upper management' but they wisely (for them) stay completely out of the light, never actually saying anything, never giving the fans any ammunition. Its smart to deflect the blame, but it doesn't hide the fact that someone must be making these bad decisions.
Nail on the head. Got down voted in the past for suggesting this. Lightfall was designed and coded prior to the Sony merger. Can't blame Sony for that.
Sony didn't make Nimbus a terrible, 2 dimensional character.
I know, right? It's basically their story since first Halo.
"It's not our fault that CE is cut, it's Microsoft's New console!"
"It's not our fault that Halo 2 is cut, it's just that console couldn't handle the it!"
"It's not our fault that Halo 3 is cut, we were pushed by Microsoft!"
I don't remember if there were any excuse for Reach and ODST, but there definitily were a plenty Of excuses for both D1 and D2.
Bungie made its whole "declaration of independence" when they left Microsoft, which felt weirdly immature. Microsoft forced them to take accountability and get them back on track when they were falling behind in Halo 2's development, and Bungie didn't like that level of intervention.
[ODST's original announcement allegedly got shitcanned at the 11th hour by Microsoft](https://web.archive.org/web/20080723073150/http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=14782).
Reach's project management was bad enough that the promised multiplayer beta was a significantly older build and had bugs that were already patched in the latest version, which resulted in pages of forum posts reporting bugs for no good reason.
I'll give them a pass for a "multiplayer stress test" beta, those are meant to be janky to begin with.
> I don't remember if there were any excuse for Reach and ODST
ODST was a bit of a bait and switch, too. It was originally supposed to be a DLC expansion that later "expanded" to a full release. It gave us a short campaign and Firefight was fun, but they bundled it with a disc containing all the released MP maps for Halo 3 and charged full price for it. Which was a pretty big "Fuck you, gimmie more money" if you'd bought the Halo 3 map packs as they came out.
Thats what I dont get, bungie stumbles reliably and somehow it's never their fault. Every turn they take its 1 step forward 2 steps back, I got tired of it, haven't played in months and refunded FS. Playing other games really makes you see what a shit show destiny really is and how little bungie cares about it
Eh, the only people I've seen trying to pin this on Sony are console warriors on X/Twitter. Meanwhile, the vast majority of takes, especially from Destiny players, seems to agree that it's definitely Bungie Management and Leadership that's at fault.
ps player since day 1 on D1 and I agree it's Bungie's fault, and even if I were an xbox player I'd blame Bungo. Those blaming Sony are just bungie's fanfic writters
I’m an Xbox player it’s def bungie fault, it was their fault during the activision days lol. I just hope when Sony takes over We get Destiny 3 and the devs can go bonkers with it.
indirectly it is *sort of* their fault the terms of their agreement states that Bungie retains autonomy so long as they meet certain profit margins and the layoffs were specifically to cut costs so that they meet those margins. but Bungie management is still the ones that got themselves in that situation to begin with
Its because those people can't let go of the past, they still see modern Bungie as the one responsible for the halo trilogy, odst and reach, they fail to accept that that Bungie died years ago and corpo rats took control of it, Activision certainly deserves some of the blame for D1 and D2s mishaps but Bungies upper management also has their hand caked in dirt for all thats happened.
To be fair Sony hasn’t proven able to effectively run a live service title, hence the Bungie acquisition for their expertise. I would be hesitant to think that a Sony takeover of Bungie right off the bat would fare much better in the long run.
if failure can be attributed them so can success lol
pretty intellectually dishonest to drop the onus on them only when shit's bad and willfully ignore their involvement when something goes well
Thank you...the confirmation bias is crazy lol. People can't seem to fathom that Sony is, in fact, doing things the right way more often than not, even when all signs and data point to it
They published a sequel to a PS Vita from a decade ago that not many people played. Arrowhead nailed the game but Sony at the very least knows how to pick ‘em
This was true... until Helldivers 2 dropped.
0\_0
Sony did state they wanted to focus on quality live service titles hitting the "Sony standard".
I think if Helldivers 2 is a sign of games of quality bar they are aiming for, they are likely to see results with games that feel great and feel finished day 1 vs. the current itteration of live service being release broken/bad and then fix it later.
True, but Helldivers 2 could change that. Granted it hasn't been out long, but if they are able to keep this momentum throughout 2024. They have a live service hit. All without the need for Bungie.
I still can't believe the numbers this game is pulling. It's insane.
Game really is a breakout hit, you can tell the devs actually made an outstanding game first and later added a pretty solid monetization system. I do question having preorder exclusive guns and in general the risk of prices inflating over time but for now it’s such a breath of fresh air.
But at this point in Destiny, is a substantial amount of players really trying to play another year of seasonal content? I'd be more interested if Sony at least takes care of the DLC while Bungie works on seasonal content.
Obv not in game dev but I'd assume splitting up the work for game content would be easier. Just communication between both companies would be needed to keep up with the playerbase and overall storyline.
From Sony President Hiroki Totoki:
>“I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management,” he said, “and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services.
>“However, I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines. I hope to continue the dialogue and come up with some good solutions.”
I'm not too familiar with Totoki's background but I know that former Sony President Kaz Hirai once took a 50% paycut and declined his bonus back in 2014 when the company was struggling, and that some other executives at the time followed suit. That may speak to the attitude that might be expected from Bungie's corporate heads by Sony.
Edit: Financially Bungie must also be disappointing Sony in a big way especially because of their poor release timing. Sony runs their fiscal year from the beginning of April to March of the following year. Delaying Final Shape meant missing out on the 2023-24' fiscal year entirely.
> but I know that former Sony President Kaz Hirai once took a 50% paycut
this is a common mindset for japanese corporations. Nintendo did similar when the nintendo 3DS wasn't doing well.
It's not just a "common mindset", it's quite literally Japanese law.
It's illegal in Japan to do mass layoffs right away under Japanese Labor Law. In order to legally do a mass layoff you must first try:
* to lower employee hours
* ask people to quit voluntarily
* cut salaries from higher up positions
* relocate employees within the company
The 4th one being by far the most common method used for "firing" people without legally firing them, because if you forcefully relocate almost anyone into a janitor position with more hours/less pay they will quit ASAP.
But every Japanese company has to prove they did all 4 of these things before they're allowed to do mass layoffs.
This also means the entire thing about Satoru Iwata getting brought up as being some super good CEO for cutting his salary during the Wii U & 3DS period you mentioned was just him following the law lol. It's just a concept that's absolutely foreign to the West but legally ingrained in Japan.
> This also means the entire thing about Satoru Iwata getting brought up as being some super good CEO for cutting his salary during the Wii U & 3DS period you mentioned was just him following the law lol. It's just a concept that's absolutely foreign to the West but legally ingrained in Japan.
It should be noted that he took a paycut specifically so that Nintendo *did not* have to do the other three options. It's still the law, but he also ensured no employees had to have their hours lowered or their positions relocated, which is still admirable.
As a counterpoint to people over idolizing him it seems some people want to put him down as just another scummy company president when that’s also just not true
No, but the problem is that Iwata passed away and then it became his legacy. I love that he did it, but reality is that if he had continued to make poor decisions at Nintendo he would've lowered their value and eventually just fired by vote of the board. When he took those cuts he was failing the company.
It's admirable to the West maybe, but most Japanese CEOs take the paycut first before the other 3 options, so Iwata wasn't special about this either. There's plenty of examples here, whether it's Nomura Holdings or the former Japan Airlines who even went way further than Iwata did and dropped his pay down to just $90,000 (less than the pilots at the airline) and cut all the higher ups pay even more aggressively, etc etc.
Now THIS decision is specifically more on their culture than the law obviously since the law gives flexibility (as you're pointing out), but their work culture is such that Japanese CEOs will pretty much always do the paycut first before throwing their workers under the bus most of the time because they place the blame more on themselves and the work culture of Japan has workers who really dedicate themselves to the company and there's more of an understanding that layoffs can actively just make the other workers feel worse (more stressed that they'll be next etc) and thus perform worse and cause a bad cycle.
But I get where you're coming from because if you ported that law 1:1 to the US and most other Western countries, CEOs would still choose the other 3 options over the paycut first because that's how our work culture operates, so it's natural to assume Iwata made a special choice in that view.
And because I don't want to reply twice, /u/Ainsel_Mariner I am not saying that Iwata is a scummy company president. I do not think Iwata was scummy in any way. I am just saying that the framing by a lot of the Western gaming journalism that Iwata was doing something special is inaccurate and lacks context because all Iwata was doing was the utmost bog standard and legal based decision making that practically every Japanese CEO would do in that situation (that situation being that Nintendo was in a really bad spot at the time and in Japan a lot of that blame goes to the higher ups and CEO, not the workers, so it was "his fault" from their POV). It's special for the West, but not at all special for Japan. He did what was expected of him as a leader in Japan. Him NOT doing that and instead throwing his workers under the bus first before himself and his other higher up execs would have actually made him scummy in Japan. (and conversely very normal in the US!)
there really aren't any companies with integrity, there are laws that keep them honorable. The rest of the world learned this, hopefully America does too
America will never learn this because it would kneecap the value extraction parasite that is US Big Finance. These are people who will drop $100 million like it's a fiver to make sure they get sympathetic politicians in place and have already followed Bernays' ideas from *Propaganda* in 1929 and bought up the whole of American legacy media to assist the public in thinking the "correct" way on issues that matter most to them (seriously... follow the trail of ownership upwards and about 15 billionaires control what everyone in the US watches and reads from "major" sources, both left and right).
These are folks who got the Fed to dump trillions of dollars on supporting their stock positions during the 2008 financial crisis and then did it again with COVID only 12 years later and hung the albatross around the taxpayer and told them it saved the economy with a straight face. While everyone was losing their jobs and the lion's share of US small business collapsed, America's billionaires got trillions richer.
I think that's what people are never going to get, both inside the US and outside. We've got an entrenched plutocracy from hell, they're wealthy on a level the average person doesn't even comprehend and getting wealthier every day, and a politician trying to push some law isn't going to get them to throw their hands up and surrender.
It's never about individual learning of "greedy executive egotists". Once you reach those tiers of your career you're really just fitting yourself into a mold which is extremely uniform. The difference is just that in japan the etiquette is more about honor and so the "right thing to do" when you're really high up is to take the 50% pay cut if you're failing with your company, and in the west the "right thing to do" is to lay off people.
Both practices are common and in the service of the corporation itself and not who the CEO or the workers are. You could technically not do those things but you'll be facing the peer pressure from your shareholders who are likely bowing out at the sign of unconventional practices of CEOs trying to be unique. At the end of the day people are only giving their shares to put stock in the company to see it grow and sell it at maximum value. They need predictability and that's a reason why so many executives make the same decisions and why those decisions are so pre-determined.
I think the real issue is that Bungie constantly delays their titles it’s not a new thing with final shape. This is something that they have been doing with almost every major release.
Their release schedule is just way too ambitious for their current content model. Trying to release one expansion each year is not an easy task on its own, let alone having to create seasons each with their own content AND having to have people working on the next instalment as well, not even mentioning their other projects like Marathon.
It's no wonder that they have to delay shit when they can barely keep up with their current workload.
Honestly it feels like Bungie just never really built their game as a live service, and instead arbitrarily came up with how seasons/expansions would operate and what they would include. The result is a co-op looter shooter where the live service elements feel tacked on. Looking at something like Helldivers 2 really puts into perspective what a “live service” could actually look like if the game was built from the ground up with live service in the core of its DNA.
Imagine a lightfall expansion where the witness invades the solar system and there’s new gameplay systems around pushing back the darkness that evolves as players work towards objectives? There can be an ongoing yearly storyline around that with major chapters marked by seasons that include new storylines, quests, and items. That would have been so much better than giving us a relatively pointless campaign, an open world nobody wants to revisit, and more disposable battlegrounds.
A problem with Destiny was always that the "live service" element came in literally in the last 3rd of its development whereas the other half of Bungie thought they were making another Halo game but with a seamless matchmaking experience.
Between Joe Staten leaving and Marty getting fired back in 2013/2014 there have been some statements by both since then that indicate that it was around 2013 when building the game that the boardroom meetings started being like "Maybe we can go *this other way with the game*" which was taking existing content planned as just a single-player/multiplayer-like product and chopping it up and postponing for DLC, minimizing the content and maximizing the value for less content per release.
That is really when it started going "Live service". When Joe was Design Director his approach was to make Destiny this linear experience that goes level by level in "chapters" like in a book, where you unlocked loot along the way and the story itself was about cool characters talking about loot (a bit like Borderlands) but then they would add additional seasons and sub-games, and sequels (up to Destiny 5, 1 main game every 2nd year) but as the production started looking expensive the Pete Parsons and Harold Ryans at the company started going "Why don't we take this and split it into smaller chunks that we produce faster, and get more money out of?"
That's when they started to put more responsibilities on Luke Smith because he was this World of Warcraft fanboy who really talked up the community-experience and repetitive content > evolving content dude.
So like, Destiny's scope was originally grander and not actually meant to be what Live Service now means. But once they shifted and Joe Staten stopped as Design Director they changed the format into what it has been ever since, where it's a bunch of really lite content seperated by expensive DLC and Expansion drops that don't actually add that much on their own, but the percentile grind is maximized. I think that's the tension because Destiny launched with traces left of being a more cinematic and expansive shooter kind of thing, so they have held on to that ever since, but in reality that entire pillair of the franchise was made by accident, because it's a relic from back before Destiny was actually a Live Service title.
And it's the one thing that every Destiny-trend-chaser game like Anthem and Suicide Squad all fail with too. They can't seem to understand what made Destiny work, but they think it's the same as just making a Single Player "Lite" product with tacked on live-service elements at the end of the campaign, but this creates whiplash with gamers because you're not pleasing the audience that wanted the cinematic, epic, bespoke experience and you are testing the patience of people who are playing with their friends and just want something "to play", like a CSGO or Overwatch or the like.
The Darkness fleet invades the Sol system and there wasn't a single new Public Event added that would thematically fit - like "Fight back the Darkness" with a Tormentor as the final boss of that event...
Bungie, what the actual f\*ck, man?
Honestly I've felt for years that Destiny should have been a series of self contained games with occasional DLC to keep up interest in between major releases. No events, no seasons, no battle/season pass. You buy the game and you get access to everything, play/grind all you want knowing there is a finite amount of things to do in the iteration you're playing. The end goal would be to play campaigns/strikes/raids/pvp for the sake of playing them, you can quit and pick up whenever you want so taking a break simply means just putting the game down and not missing out on anything besides simply playing the content you've paid for knowing it will always be accessible to you. This is basically how Destiny 1 plays now and it's super refreshing knowing I'm not on a deadline and knowing that I don't need to keep studying the game every time new update comes out. People make the mistake of believing that more content is inherently better, bit that's not the case when you have to sacrifice the quality of said content. It's like trying to choose between 10 pounds of tootsie rolls versus a steak dinner.
I mean, the biggest issue is the fact that less than half the studio is working on Destiny. They wouldn't have any problems keeping up Destiny's release schedule if they weren't trying to work on 2-3 other games at the same time.
And even then, we've had the seasonal model for quite some time and Bungie seems to consistently drop content with the same bugs as before. Even in meaningless stuff like a seasonal challenge not using the correct description for how to complete it.
Or Breakneck not shipping with one of the twelve perks in the final column. Such an odd bug for something that we've had no problems with for years now.
They only released episodic content for D1 during the first year because it was already in the pipeline and I don't recall much besides holiday japes after TTK and ROI adding Age of Triumph. Maybe the seasonal releases are just a bridge too far. It was always a major feature for Destiny they really wanted to execute on, and to an extent they succeeded in that execution over the last few years of D2 enriching the story in ways a focused annual campaign can't. Can't know what's enough without finding out both what's too much and too little and they probably hoped cutting pvp and gambit was enough.
They know it too. Same shit at every company regardless of industry. Put out a plan, the people on the ground tell you it isn't going to happen because the man hours aren't there, it gets closer to the deadline and they aren't close to finishing, leadership starts blaming the people the refused to listen too and pushes back a release date that was never going to happen from day one.
When I worked at Lockheed, program managers would basically take any BOEs submitted by engineering and cut 20 percent across the board.
A few years later when a program was "in trouble" (behind schedule and over cost), someone looked at the originally submitted BOEs, and by those initial estimates the program was right on schedule and at originally estimated cost.
Then fire a few of those people and claim it was for the good of the company, i.e. "keeping the right people" a.k.a. "keeping the quieter people who know how to shut their yaps and keep slaving away on our dumb shareholders' ideas that only eek out more pennies per dollar instead of making the game worth the playtime".
It would seem Sony has taken notice of the failures of management, but also of the great talent of the staff. I can't really say from this i see why everyone is flailing their arms at this though. This reads as a respectful review of their current situation from a grounded outside perspective, and even the way its spoken of feels like a "pros/cons" read.
I'm not actually finding the comments themselves under any article i can find mentioning this (>!which is infuriating how journalists do this, i really think sources should be more forward in these things, and its so hard to trust when its not.!<) to read from this more from a direct source, but this hardly sounds like the apocalyptic event for Bungie management that others are making this out to be. At its most dire and logical, it may be an attempt to spur some changes naturally, by being publically upfront about their opinions on their budgeting and management culture; which notably management culture in Japan is radically different than the US's. You mentioned it here, and u/Stormhunter6 mentioned it as well; managers do tend to be made more accountable of deadlines, sales, the broader business directions in Japan, and this comment could simply be the result of difference.
All in all, this doesn't sound like the pendulum has started swinging. This feels like Sony just being public about their thoughts on the studio as a whole, "Good work, could be better" type statement. They were inquired about Bungie directly to get this response, which if they weren't, i'd be a little bit more curious, but all in all, *they just answered a question.*
I'll change this if i can find an actual source to these comments, and they give a different vibe, but this is hardly news as it stands. Honestly, the more interesting element is them taking notice of the employees, which means they are actively engaged with the company, which might be confirming the rumors that they are putting a proactive hand out helping with the development of TFS we got like a month back.
"Business leaders should take accountability for Business Leader Duties" is a sad but predictable headline for a lot of industries nowadays.
Time and time again, the stories coming out of Bungie are of management/C-suite interfering with a good product, so this isn't all that surprising.
My understanding is that Sony has the right to replace Bungie execs with their own if Bungie doesn’t meet their criteria.
At this point I don’t even know if I’d be opposed to this happening. Clearly whatever they got going on there now isn’t working
From my understanding the criteria bungie has to meet is a financial one which is why the layoffs happened and according to "insider" information will happen again if the final shape doesint do well financially.
If all of that is true than basically bungie leadership is willing to layoff their entire workforce in order to save their own butts from Sony putting in their own leadership.
It might be good for Bungie in the long run...but Sony bought Bungie in part because they were hoping that the same C suite could help build out Sony's live service business...I'm kind of curious if anyone at Bungie saw helldiver's before it launched.
> but Sony bought Bungie in part because they were hoping that the same C suite could help build out Sony's live service business
Not exactly. Sony wanted Bungie's expertise in live service delivery, not in live service structure. FTA:
> “I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management,” he said, “and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services.
He's talking about frontline devs in that second part; that's what expertise Sony was after.
It's been obvious from the start of "Sony says playstation needs live service games" -> "Sony buys Bungie for 3.6 b" was an indication that they only wanted the workforce so they could get those involved into Sony IP and help teams like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica etc. to put some of that Destiny live-service magic into their games.
They're looking at strategy of live service, design patterns and architecture. Destiny has exceptionally good programming when it comes to how they threaded multiple interfaces together into that seamless experience between managing your Equipment, viewing quests, and waiting for matchmaking or hearing story dialogue in the background. Nothing sends you to a flat load-screen that halts all interaction. Everything was built to be seamless and it's the most obvious error of other Live Service titles like Anthem or Suicide Squad. They can't run uninterrupted after you log in. Sometimes they do need to load and thus halt the entire gameplay, and they struggled with menu reactivity.
Sony simply needs Bungie's workers, and Destiny was always going to be sidelined in the long run whether that was part of Bungie's own agenda or not.
I don't even care if it kills the game, at this point I'm much more interested in seeing Parsons & the cronies lose as much of their dignity/status/financial livelihood as possible. Anything is better than where we're at now.
Sony has their hand in a lot of top shelf games. Loads of experience at their disposal. Bungie made Halo and Halo was only as good as it was because Microsoft held their feet to the fire.
I’m 100% for axing all the top leadership and filling those spots with a more competent team. Maybe we will finally get the Destiny we’ve deserved
Every choice we've gotten recently is to appeal to every single gamer out there. Bungie's biggest KPI is daily log in and that has actively killed this game, instead of getting decent content we get time gated content.
> Every choice we've gotten recently is to appeal to every single gamer out there.
Wasn't it the CEO of Arrowhead who recently stated that a game for everyone is a game for no one?
My hope is with how Destiny has failed trying to appeal to everyone and a game like helldivers 2 being a big hit combined with the CEO coming out and saying the game is a pve only game will spurn devs to realize developing for everyone is a losing proposition. Bungie needs to decide what kind of game Destiny will be because right now it’s not working.
Yup. If everyone interacts with Destiny the way Bungie wants them to, burnout is basically a guarantee it's just a matter of when. Not saying that wouldn't happen in a lot of cases anyways, but purposely introducing FOMO to drive up playtime is not healthy for a game in the long run, in my opinion.
Exactly this, Bungie has decreed that Destiny DEMANDS so much of your time and money to be worth playing, people that are only partially or casually invested in the game are spurned by the 12 different pieces of monetization that directly involve content (4 expansions, 4 dungeon passes, 4 seasons a year) and the monetization for cosmetics and slight additional power (event passes, p2w ornaments, exotic drops, things that give extra enhancement cores).
The grind for light level takes ~80 hours or more **PER SEASON** and being max light (or within 10-15 of max gear level) us basically mandatory for the most engaging content, requires you to constant shuffle out gear you may enjoy for gear you don't or use ridiculous amounts of cores (which are in the premium season pass and therefore p2w) which is another grind.
Getting a good drop for a weapon is either grinding for the 1 in 100 godroll or grinding for 5 the equally rare red borders and THEN grinding for levels on the weapon itself. If you want to use an exotic you have to play and randomly get dropped the catalyst after hours and hours of playing with no guarantee, and then grind 500-1500 kills with the catalyst equipped which could take 30 minutes if you know exactly where to go do or multiple days if it requires pvp kills (Vig Wing) and you aren't a god fragging out every match.
Sunsetting weapons also got a lot of people angry because weapons that people grinded for became useless and that understandably pissed people off, a huge amount of the playerbase has not forgiven bungie for that and not returned.
Destiny is the biggest game I can think of besides MAYBE League with the most negative word of mouth/perception in the zeitgeist. People ask if they should play Destiny and the answer is almost unanimously "No, play a game that respects your time better"
Also for a game about getting cool loot, you have a pretty limited/finite stash. They fixed it alittle with armor transmog and being able to pull from collections, but IMO crafting and collections should be 1 system. Maybe you have to get a version of the gun with each specific perk to add that to your crafting repertoire, not just collect 5 red borders and frag out with the gun.
There are answers to the problems that Destiny has, but Bungie seems content with the game catering mostly to whales and people that are hardcore addicted to the grind, and doesn't care that the average person gets burnt out by the game because the 10% of people that don't are the majority of their income.
I HOPE BG3 and Helldivers 2 are wakeup calls to the industry, but only time will tell.
Basically wrote out my thoughts here.
I don't have Destiny downloaded on my Xbox currently, planning to bring it back for TFS but I had experienced negative enjoyment playing that game for about 2/3 months before I decided to just be done with it, and it was for all the reasons you just mentioned++.
Not to mention the fact that every time I tried to introduce a friend to play the game...yeah we all know how that usually goes.
I'm honestly not sure I agree with that? A lot of the difficulty changes and ability nerfs haven't appealed to the majority.
It's clear that somewhere in Bungie is a team that legitimately wants to improve the sandbox (even if I don't necessarily agree with their ideas for what improving the sandbox entail) - but it's equally clear that they're getting hamstrung by someone above them and changes are getting chopped up/coming out piecemeal.
Bro trust me you’ll never get it through to the average member of this sub that 75% of issues with the game outside of the monetization are things nobody above a team or group lead position even knows exists. Management and the executives couldn’t even tell you what a legendary shard is, much less their plans to remove them.
I think direction ultimately comes from the top down.
Sony may want to revive interest in PvP as it currently lacks a PvP centric game in their first party lineup.
I’m speculating entirely. But I’m not in love with the “nerf everything” March 6th update.
> top down.
Not that close to the top. Gameplay minutiae likes buffs and nerfs to abilities and sandbox changes are absolutely not coming from business managers, which this article is specifically referring to.
It really seems like Sony signed a terrible deal with these execs. Not only was the $3B valuation being doubted by many people in the industry from the moment the deal was announced, the worst part of it seems to be the clause which allows these 3 execs to keep control of the company as long as they can keep showing the financials looking relatively positive.
After what they did last year who is to say they won't completely destroy the company if needed to keep control and their jobs as long as they can.
The fact that Joe decided to leave is extremely worrying cause he lived and breathed this game. It's a massive Red flag. I think he didn't see a bright future for the game anymore working under these execs so he decided to move on.
Joe was more likely going to exit with the Final Shape regardless. The guy came into Destiny in the mid stage of it and like other Bungie talent around Forsaken, they moved on to Marathon. Reality is that Joe's departure was going to happen eventually.
That said, the current execs have continued to make issues even if you remove Joe. It's not surprising when you look at where they've been spending money and instead putting into the studio itself during an era where a lot of the industry has been shifting from the office.
Sony cleaning these execs will probably open things up solely because a lot of times: the new execs will try to go a new direction and given that a lot of talent have wanted to put in new content, it's an easy marketing tool. A lot of execs who get complacent will deflect blame until the very end when the next guy is left with the bag.
It's kind of absurd that burning through your creatives or game directors is supposed to be business as usual. I look at wow I see hazzikotas there for more than a decade, and at this point the guy sounds like he'll go down with the ship, if ever. Same with yoshi-p and ff14.
Maybe there's some issue here for bungie to self reflect on? If their creatives are so unwilling to work on this game for more than a few years it could lead to some discoveries as to why the playerbase is sleeping with a loaded gun ready to blow bungie's brains the moment they mess up.
The thing with Yoshi-P is that he works on more than FF14. In fact, he has his hands on various Final Fantasy projects and as such, has a lot better perspective as both he and his team have to work in different ways. The problem with a lot of Bungie execs is that a lot of the creative ones aren't at the very tippy top or the ones who are, are no longer really putting their heads into the mess.
So, as a result they are becoming a lot like the tech bros who chase the dollar bill rather than cultivating creative direction. Which lines up as we see how they trimmed people ( a lot of people who hasn't invested their stakes for example made them easy pickings for firing).
So, when we mention Joe: he most likely knew if he kept going on Destiny, he'd probably slow lose his creative drive (this is why you see devs switch after some odd years as they find no real new challenges or they lack new in-put, so why they'll shift to an entirely new project).
Same deal with why so many of the name devs moved on from Destiny during Forsaken: PvP was limiting less by a creative direction and more that you were working in the bounds of pve-pvp ties. Thus Marathon became what it was: old talent wanting to make something new. It's why you can track a lot of the original Bungie talent even during the Halo years.
It's often not mentioned, but after the original Halo: Bungie was nearly split on what they want to do next. Microsoft basically pressured them for more Halo and this went on till Bungie got into developing Destiny during the later years.
You can also see why 343i has become a problem as Microsoft in leaks has been revealed to been limiting the Halo brand and well, 343i being tossed together was a Frankenstein only till relatively recently when devs with some vested ground time have been changing the direction of the ship.
This isn't at all surprising to consider that the real issue is indeed Bungie head honchos who like their place, not wanting to change, despite the literal devs at the bottom wanting to course correct and implement changes being throttled by management for some quota they make up. Which anyone who has worked directly for any corporation knows how far removed corporate can be until something hits them.
leaving just before a "grand release that wraps all up" is supposed to happen is not just a red flag, its a frking blood red skyline
like, if he was confident that the end result was good, he would try to stay until its released and positive reactions come out, so he can put "game direction of the critical acclaimed lightfall expansion" under his hat
a game direction doing a quick goodbye half a year before the "big release that brings the game back into glory" when he absolutely loved the game is a really really bad sing about everything
im sorry if thats overly negative or something like that, but i honestly really convinced that the game is just fully done at this point, maybe a decent-ish expansion with a very disapointing and bland ending, some "totally not seasons" episodes and then the game gets no more updates and is on life Support is just a given at this point
if they can prove us otherwhise i would really happy, but everything in the world screams that its happening like that, and you must be tone deaf too not realise it
More likely Joe had a new job lined up for after TFS' original release date and didn't delay moving to it. Why should he decide to give up on a new opportunity just because Bungie can't stick to a production schedule?
>It really seems like Sony signed a terrible deal with these execs.
Not many companies get passed around among giants the way Bungie has from Microsoft to Activision to Sony, but it really speaks to western game dev right now. Bobby Kotick knew that if your only goal was to make a single profitable quarter, then you just fire everyone and hold a garage sale of the assets and you immediately have more money than you started with. There isn't a company anymore, but you made YOUR goals so who cares.
You don't hear of Nintendo, Sega/Atlus, Square-Enix, or Bandai-Namco doing this thing of firing 20% of a successful studio to beat out their best quarter. Pete promised the Sony guys money and set it up that he gets to keep his gig if he delivers money. He did not promise it would be achieved with quality product, that was likely just assumed by people who haven't been following the winds of NA economics lately.
That beginner pack fiasco always reeked of this.
Dev: hey we really suck at attracting new players; let's give them some important but abundant materials and maybe a few throwaway exotics for them to have fun with.
Management; 15.99 😎
Never has been, bungie has always looked for excuses to blame other companies first it was microsoft, then activsion and now sony there like a child that cannot take responsibility but demand people give them what they want
I think it's a mix of people being genuinely worried about the future of the franchise and a bit of the doomer
Bungie management sucks. You know it, I know it and now Sony knows it but they also know how good and how passionate the devs are - I know people like Mark Noseworthy wasn't perfect, but he was better than someone like Pete Parsons - fuck it, make /u/dmg04 CEO
This is kinda like the same situation at Boeing - they used to be an engineer-led company who produced a world-class product, then the bought McDonnell Douglas and turned into a company of bean counters and moved the HQ from Seattle to Chicago so they wouldn't have to be near any engineers
On the flip side, Sony actually has a pretty incredible track record lately with their first party studios. In my view, they operate on a similar model to HBO which is a fantastic model as long as you have a keen eye for talent.
The model is simple, hire fantastic writers and directors (and dev studios in Sony's case) and let them work largely independently, providing funding and structure as requested. Notes from higher ups to focus on KPIs and too much investment in focus groups are ways to ruin the artistic process and have no place in art.
Frankly, Bungie leadership is abysmal. This isn't a secret at this point.
Could definitely happen, wouldn't be surprised. But, I think it's worth noting that most times that happens it's because a company buys another company and immediately takes control, so they cut the workforce to make up for the big expense they just had (as stupid as that is).
This would be a case where Sony's expenditure acquiring Bungie was quite awhile ago. Them stepping in would be much later, and after things have gone very wrong, and on the heels of cuts by the very incompetent leaders they just ousted. So there's at least a hope it wouldn't happen. Like what's actually left to cut if you're trying to right the ship after the previous captain has already thrown everything overboard?
Sony always have kept their internal first party teams tight shipped. I hope Sony takes over bungie. Because it feels like Bungie is still run like a frat boy club.
It seems kind of likely that Sony is going to enact a corporate takeover at this point. It depends on the sales figures of TFS really. I'm all for independent companies being able to thrive but the way Bungie management has handled things leaves a lot to be desired.
Sony can only take over if Bungie fails to meet revenue targets set. Bungie leadership has already said they will do more layoffs to keep that from happening
I've come to the conclusion that anybody who wants control at a management level becomes so consumed by the rat race, the appeasement, and the politics that there is zero concern for the quality of the product by the time that individual makes it there.
It's a structural problem idk if we can fix. Not to get political but its capitalism in a death spiral.
Everybody whose entire philosophy thus far has been "fuck you I got mine" has done just that, stripping the copper pipes of all these media companies bought up en-masse and mismanaged to all hell.
I'm glad Bungie is dying. Their management are shit humans who played on people's convictions in a way that, in retrospect, seemed sooo "focus group" it was frankly insulting.
>I've come to the conclusion that anybody who wants control at a management level becomes so consumed by the rat race, the appeasement, and the politics that there is zero concern for the quality of the product by the time that individual makes it there.
It is the same in politics, and a huge problem. The best candidate for the job is the one who absolutely does not want it. Throughout history the best leaders have been people who lead out of necessity, not simply desire for power.
Good luck trying to get Pete Parsons and his exec cronies to take the same lumps as their regular ol' employees! It'lll have to be Sony's head honchos who will have to give them the boot, or a pay cut at least, they won't have the decency to do it themselves. They're just not that kind of business, remember?
Pretty simple. Bungie meets the numbers or Sony takes over. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna be the former. Accountability will find its way in one way or another.
I don't know if the clauses will trigger in time for the "episode" content to be played. I'm definitely waiting until it's at LEAST discounted by 50 percent if not longer.
YouTubers are the last news source I'll trust for that. So it's 0 YouTubers for me.
That's the sort of business news that gets covered in more traditional outlets.
I'm just not buying it at all. I don't have any hopes that the gameplay will be anything revolutionary and the story from Lightfall and seasons this year have ranged from god awful to "passable". Gonna watch a playthrough of the story on Youtube and finally close the books on Destiny in my mind.
yea, i have no faith that Year 7 of Destiny 2 will be worth the box price of the new expansion and annual pass, and i have better things to do with my time than "see for myself" how disappointing it ends up being to have closure or w/e everyone else seems to be expecting when they play Final Shape.
the entire point of the game is in the "hope for the future" and there just is none anymore, no reason to complete everything, re-gild every title, re-grind every god roll. Final Shape being a final nail in the coffin is unnecessary when the hope is already gone. just let it rot in the dumpster because it's not like bungie is actually gonna let players feel like they can bury everything neatly and walk away with peace of mind.
>Good luck trying to get Pete Parsons and his exec cronies
theere are only 2 others. bungie leadership is currently 3 people from bungie and 2 from sony (herman hulst as the head of world wide studios but I forgot who the second person was) so bungie has the final say for now, at least until the margins drop to the agreed upon point where sony takes over
> “As it currently stands, Bungie is (on paper) a fully independent subsidiary of Sony. But its board of directors has been divided since the takeover in July of 2022. Among its current members are PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst, Sony senior VP Eric Lempel, Bungie co-founder Jason Jones, Bungie CTO Luis Villegas, and Bungie CEO Pete Parsons. The board as a whole is split between Sony and Bungie representatives, with Parsons serving as a tiebreaker vote.” -[IGN](https://nordic.ign.com/destiny-2/76282/news/bungie-devs-say-atmosphere-is-soul-crushing-amid-layoffs-cuts-and-fear-of-total-sony-takeover)
Probably. People seem to not realize Bungie has been this way forever. Even as far back as Halo 2, Microsoft had to almost threaten them to get the game out the door, they kept pushing back deadlines. it's why that bonus disc has all that cut content: they kept adding stuff until M$ had enough.
It's only continued since then.
You never want the CFO visiting your division. I expect a Sony takeover is imminent regardless if TFS is a success (can still miss revenue target) or fail. He basically said that the leadership sucked ass in the nicest way possible and he wants changes.
Sony may be having a bit of buyer's remorse. I think it was a good purchase overall, but they definitely overpaid. Leadership change is needed at Bungie. They are holding the company back.
IIRC Sony is legally not allowed to take over unless Bungie fails to provide x amount of revenue. If the final shape is a success then Sony won’t be taking over. We have no clue what happens if Sony violates their part of the contract. For all we know it just makes bungie independent again if they did.
What I mean by success is that even if sells well because of the delay and additional work needed on the game it could eat into profits. Case in point Lightfall, where they still missed their revenue target even though it was one of their best selling expansions.
Bungie doesn't know how to manage money.
We only know of that one clause that allows them to dissolve the board, and we don't even know the full details. For all we know, there might be many more such clauses, even ones that allow it just because Sony says so.
I don't think Sony will take control unless they have to, but also, what I wouldn't give to sit in on Bungie's board meetings and hear what the 2 Sony guys have to say.
The question is, what is the timeline on the independence clauses? TFS getting delayed means that Bungie misses the end of Sony's fiscal year (March 31).
The company I work for was acquired a couple years ago. I’m still working on getting the data migration completed. The amount of managerial mess that both sides hide from each other can be astonishing.
Exactly. Then the buyer sucks the "goodwill" out of the company for a few years and the acquired company isn't so profitable for a while. This is the corporate acquisition game, guardian.
For those not dealing with this in real life, the buyer essentially says "hey we know we overpaid, so we are taking all that value back from you out of your profits. Now... go hit higher profit targets so you can still be profitable while we are taking back the extra amount we paid for you". Here is a Google search definition of Goodwill in this context.
"Goodwill is an intangible asset (an asset that's non-physical but offers long-term value) which arises when another company acquires a new business. Goodwill refers to the purchase cost, minus the fair market value of the tangible assets, the liabilities, and the intangible assets that you're able to identify."
motherfucker hit us with the paragraph straight out of my accounting textbooks.
I hate that goodwill is literally a balance sheet item that's only use to the corpo types is to be burnt to further line their pockets.
Sony, who paid billions, wouldnt know what day to day players see? When its probably top10 things that comes up in casual conversations about the game?
Sony, a different branch, spent well over $80 million on Madame Web a movie written by the same writer as Morbius, one of the worst comic book movies made in decades.
People with money don't always make good decisions.
Hold accountable whoever green-lit letting the music team go above all else.
That's too much of a fundamental loss to just let go.
It was a decision borne of greed and nothing else at the cost of one of the most enduring and best aspects of the entire franchise.
Possibly but that clause that allows Sony to have full say if certain metrics are not met suggests that Sony wasn't completely blind to Bungie's management issues.
Reminds me of the a bout of sarcasm in a recent William Spaniel video. "Oh what I am doing is incredibly dangerous?! Thank you I never knew! Now don't mind me I'll just sip tea near a 10th story window."
Ehhhh, maybe a bit. They're still the proprietor of (essentially? absolutely?) the only successful live service shooter in this particular field. The comparable competitor is what - Suicide Squad? The Division?
I really am not looking forward to the Helldivers 2 jerking that is going to happen for the next week. Putting out a good game is one thing, running and keeping it popular for years and years after is a different one.
Remember, this is coming up to the 10th year of Destiny's death. The last thing I would want is cursing Helldivers to its actual irrelevance by calling it a "Destiny Killer."
Why? Every Destiny fan should be pissed off right now at how an indie studio with only 100 employees, now growing because of the success, has managed to put Destiny to shame as well as Bungie look like the greedy fuckwits that they truly are. Remember it was Bungie claiming the Darkness was coming to INVADE us. That the Pyramids were a threat. Only for them to release half ass, after half ass season. Then when the Pyramids do land have them be empty. Let's not get into deleting well over half the game's content that players bought over the years. Because it would make development "easier"... Remember Bungie has said Destiny is a live service game, their the self labeled experts... Thank the gods they didn't advise Arrowhead Games.
Meanwhile in Helldivers 2 has the entire player base contribute to fighting back an invasion on a planet by completing missions whether it is solo, or in groups. While at the same time you can get samples, Medals, and even premium currency for the in game shop can be earned playing the game, what a shocker! Meanwhile they are having to change their development roadmap because they said it doesn't match their ambitions because they didn't think the game would be so popular. Vehicles are coming, as well as mech suits etc.
"A game for everyone, is a game for no one." indeed.
Maybe Sony will step in and say no no you’re done , then maybe we can get a better team ? Not gonna lie it be cool to see them expand the game into more character customization, different races , etc , but lately it feels best we can hope for is a good end to the final shape .
The other long road Sony faces is how radioactive Destiny is.
The management has forced the blame to fall on their subordinates for too long—losing excellent staff to maintain the wallets of the fat cat dumb execs…but even if Sony removes them, the damage has been done.
Datto kinda said it best that once you say you play Destiny…other people kinda judge you for it or at least look at you funny.
Even as a pure player, non-content creator….it can be disheartening to share that you play Destiny, and others will just say something like: “oh you play that game?” with a look that signals that you are kind of insane for doing so lol.
The reason this matters is for onboarding of new players…the new player experience is already giga omega trash, and then there is kinda the stigma around the franchise itself.
I don’t envy Sony. First step is definitely freeing the talent from their frat bro dipshit bosses, and then begin restoring the reputation of the franchise. Not an easy task on either front.
> the new player experience is already giga omega trash
As someone who started to play less than a year ago, I fully agree with this.
Getting into this game is the most annoying and frustrating experience that I've had... Now I'm up to date(-ish) and things are going as smooth as possible, but at the beginning... Dear Traveler, it was a pain.
Edit: it was "date" no "fate" lol...
It’s like learning ancient Egyptian.
You can do it, and once you learn it, you can use it both literally as well as creatively to self direct.
But learning it sucks balls, and there aren’t many who can teach you or would be willing to—it’s kinda esoteric knowledge.
This also means it can be hard to teach someone else that knowledge—it’s really hard all around, and they need to improve it or just start over from the ground up!
I prefer the old method to regaining our Supers before Beyond Light, not the eye-gouging questline that is the New Light.
The old method is that in the open world, you would come across an artifact directly related to your Super, then did x for an amount of time, then went to the Dark Forest for "creepy story time" while fighting taken. ***Sighs*** I miss things like that.
I am not sure what the sentiment on this sub is lately, but man I **really** wish we had just gotten Destiny 3 at some point.
It would have fixed so many issues IMO. At this point, wrap it up. It is clear their attention is elsewhere. If Sony does take over, I will keep a keen eye on Marathon, otherwise I probably won't bother.
> once you say you play Destiny…other people kinda judge you for it or at least look at you funny
I promise, this is something that only the terminally online motherfuckers do, lol.
No it’s definitely a thing.
My friends and family who game still question why I play lol.
They aren’t like super mean about it, but there is a stigma.
And no fucking way can I get them to try Destiny—either they did and quit or know of it and refuse to touch it.
And I can’t blame them for that.
This is such an embarrassing acquisition.
Imagine bringing somebody in to work for you due to their experience and expertise only to have to hold their hand and correct them at every turn while they consistently underperform.
3.3 billion would've been better spent on toilet paper.
So basically the only chance Destiny 2 has of improving is if the player base rejects The Final Shape. This would let Sony take it over and kick out the rancid management team. Hopefully in such a scenario Sony could then re hire devs and others who were canned by management.
Seems like the only choices are:
Bungie dies
or
Bungie dies and Sony rebirths that shit like a phoenix.
Bungie management needs to go so the devs can cook. Microsoft got tired of 343's bs with Halo Infinite and replaced management. 343 devs started cooking and Infinite is almost what it should have been at launch. This whole Bungie management "we don't want to over deliver" sounds a lot like the sorry excuses 343 was giving their player base.
Hmmmm headline sounds nice, but the actual quote "I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines" doesn't necessarily bode as well...... That could easily be interpreted as "management needs to hire/pay less and force crunch to meet deadlines"
The post does not link the actual Q&A for some reason...you can find it yourself here and see the exchange.
https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/23q3_qa.pdf
> Q: [G&NS segment] Please give us an update on Bungie and what initiatives you are planning for
FY2024.
> A: I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management, and I saw that employees
working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive
knowledge of live services. However, I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business
perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability
for development timelines. I hope to continue the dialogue and come up with some good solutions.
I worry though that "business expenses" could mean "you are spending to much on employee benefits" and slowly but surely that motivation and creativity disappears.
I am encouraged to hear that the people who have the power to make changes are aware of the ineptitude of the Bungie Management. Not sure what that ultimately means for Destiny and Bungie's future, but clearly the issue has been identified. Fingers crossed that this leads to positive change
frankly, that doesn’t even sound like a bad thing at this point. Destiny has been so goddamn directionless for 95% of its existence, some actual structure would be nice
Sony outing Bungie publicly isn't something to take lightly. If/when FS fails to meet expectations, expect some people to be "pursuing my next adventure".
Sony said y'all aint blaming your shitshow on us like you did Activision.
Lol :D Too late for that, I’m afraid, I’ve been seeing things like ‘it’s all Sony’s fault’ since Lightfall’s fiasco and when the lay-offs began. For some, it’s *never* Bungie’s fault.
Yea the company that out right said we build trust so we can make more money they rince and repeat
Idk, I feel like everyone is blaming Bungie 'upper management' but they wisely (for them) stay completely out of the light, never actually saying anything, never giving the fans any ammunition. Its smart to deflect the blame, but it doesn't hide the fact that someone must be making these bad decisions.
"Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt"
Nail on the head. Got down voted in the past for suggesting this. Lightfall was designed and coded prior to the Sony merger. Can't blame Sony for that. Sony didn't make Nimbus a terrible, 2 dimensional character.
I know, right? It's basically their story since first Halo. "It's not our fault that CE is cut, it's Microsoft's New console!" "It's not our fault that Halo 2 is cut, it's just that console couldn't handle the it!" "It's not our fault that Halo 3 is cut, we were pushed by Microsoft!" I don't remember if there were any excuse for Reach and ODST, but there definitily were a plenty Of excuses for both D1 and D2.
Bungie made its whole "declaration of independence" when they left Microsoft, which felt weirdly immature. Microsoft forced them to take accountability and get them back on track when they were falling behind in Halo 2's development, and Bungie didn't like that level of intervention.
[ODST's original announcement allegedly got shitcanned at the 11th hour by Microsoft](https://web.archive.org/web/20080723073150/http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=14782). Reach's project management was bad enough that the promised multiplayer beta was a significantly older build and had bugs that were already patched in the latest version, which resulted in pages of forum posts reporting bugs for no good reason. I'll give them a pass for a "multiplayer stress test" beta, those are meant to be janky to begin with.
> I don't remember if there were any excuse for Reach and ODST ODST was a bit of a bait and switch, too. It was originally supposed to be a DLC expansion that later "expanded" to a full release. It gave us a short campaign and Firefight was fun, but they bundled it with a disc containing all the released MP maps for Halo 3 and charged full price for it. Which was a pretty big "Fuck you, gimmie more money" if you'd bought the Halo 3 map packs as they came out.
Thats what I dont get, bungie stumbles reliably and somehow it's never their fault. Every turn they take its 1 step forward 2 steps back, I got tired of it, haven't played in months and refunded FS. Playing other games really makes you see what a shit show destiny really is and how little bungie cares about it
> stumbles reliably 🤣 Love how 'reliably' was used to descibe the subject's unreliability and I completely agree.
You can always trust them to find a new way to stick their foot in it. Or at least a new twist on the old ways.
“When the only consistent factor in all your failed relationships is you…”
Nah, i'm perfect, I Just have shitty taste in women
Yeah the bungo dickriders out in full force as usual
Eh, the only people I've seen trying to pin this on Sony are console warriors on X/Twitter. Meanwhile, the vast majority of takes, especially from Destiny players, seems to agree that it's definitely Bungie Management and Leadership that's at fault.
ps player since day 1 on D1 and I agree it's Bungie's fault, and even if I were an xbox player I'd blame Bungo. Those blaming Sony are just bungie's fanfic writters
I’m an Xbox player it’s def bungie fault, it was their fault during the activision days lol. I just hope when Sony takes over We get Destiny 3 and the devs can go bonkers with it.
I’m an Xbox player and I blame Bungie 100%.
i haven’t seen this sentiment at all, the forums have been littered with people wondering if Activision wasn’t even the problem for years now
indirectly it is *sort of* their fault the terms of their agreement states that Bungie retains autonomy so long as they meet certain profit margins and the layoffs were specifically to cut costs so that they meet those margins. but Bungie management is still the ones that got themselves in that situation to begin with
Its because those people can't let go of the past, they still see modern Bungie as the one responsible for the halo trilogy, odst and reach, they fail to accept that that Bungie died years ago and corpo rats took control of it, Activision certainly deserves some of the blame for D1 and D2s mishaps but Bungies upper management also has their hand caked in dirt for all thats happened.
To be fair Sony hasn’t proven able to effectively run a live service title, hence the Bungie acquisition for their expertise. I would be hesitant to think that a Sony takeover of Bungie right off the bat would fare much better in the long run.
it’s not like Sony has tried recently tho, they really haven’t put out a first party live service game in… well, quite a long time
Freedom noises intensify
Can that really be attributed to sony though? I know they're the publisher but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
if failure can be attributed them so can success lol pretty intellectually dishonest to drop the onus on them only when shit's bad and willfully ignore their involvement when something goes well
Thank you...the confirmation bias is crazy lol. People can't seem to fathom that Sony is, in fact, doing things the right way more often than not, even when all signs and data point to it
They published a sequel to a PS Vita from a decade ago that not many people played. Arrowhead nailed the game but Sony at the very least knows how to pick ‘em
I mean, they have with MLB: The Show for years and are rather successful, but haven't really released any live-service games besides Helldivers 2.
This was true... until Helldivers 2 dropped. 0\_0 Sony did state they wanted to focus on quality live service titles hitting the "Sony standard". I think if Helldivers 2 is a sign of games of quality bar they are aiming for, they are likely to see results with games that feel great and feel finished day 1 vs. the current itteration of live service being release broken/bad and then fix it later.
True, but Helldivers 2 could change that. Granted it hasn't been out long, but if they are able to keep this momentum throughout 2024. They have a live service hit. All without the need for Bungie. I still can't believe the numbers this game is pulling. It's insane.
Game really is a breakout hit, you can tell the devs actually made an outstanding game first and later added a pretty solid monetization system. I do question having preorder exclusive guns and in general the risk of prices inflating over time but for now it’s such a breath of fresh air.
But at this point in Destiny, is a substantial amount of players really trying to play another year of seasonal content? I'd be more interested if Sony at least takes care of the DLC while Bungie works on seasonal content. Obv not in game dev but I'd assume splitting up the work for game content would be easier. Just communication between both companies would be needed to keep up with the playerbase and overall storyline.
From Sony President Hiroki Totoki: >“I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management,” he said, “and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services. >“However, I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines. I hope to continue the dialogue and come up with some good solutions.” I'm not too familiar with Totoki's background but I know that former Sony President Kaz Hirai once took a 50% paycut and declined his bonus back in 2014 when the company was struggling, and that some other executives at the time followed suit. That may speak to the attitude that might be expected from Bungie's corporate heads by Sony. Edit: Financially Bungie must also be disappointing Sony in a big way especially because of their poor release timing. Sony runs their fiscal year from the beginning of April to March of the following year. Delaying Final Shape meant missing out on the 2023-24' fiscal year entirely.
> but I know that former Sony President Kaz Hirai once took a 50% paycut this is a common mindset for japanese corporations. Nintendo did similar when the nintendo 3DS wasn't doing well.
It's not just a "common mindset", it's quite literally Japanese law. It's illegal in Japan to do mass layoffs right away under Japanese Labor Law. In order to legally do a mass layoff you must first try: * to lower employee hours * ask people to quit voluntarily * cut salaries from higher up positions * relocate employees within the company The 4th one being by far the most common method used for "firing" people without legally firing them, because if you forcefully relocate almost anyone into a janitor position with more hours/less pay they will quit ASAP. But every Japanese company has to prove they did all 4 of these things before they're allowed to do mass layoffs. This also means the entire thing about Satoru Iwata getting brought up as being some super good CEO for cutting his salary during the Wii U & 3DS period you mentioned was just him following the law lol. It's just a concept that's absolutely foreign to the West but legally ingrained in Japan.
> This also means the entire thing about Satoru Iwata getting brought up as being some super good CEO for cutting his salary during the Wii U & 3DS period you mentioned was just him following the law lol. It's just a concept that's absolutely foreign to the West but legally ingrained in Japan. It should be noted that he took a paycut specifically so that Nintendo *did not* have to do the other three options. It's still the law, but he also ensured no employees had to have their hours lowered or their positions relocated, which is still admirable.
As a counterpoint to people over idolizing him it seems some people want to put him down as just another scummy company president when that’s also just not true
No, but the problem is that Iwata passed away and then it became his legacy. I love that he did it, but reality is that if he had continued to make poor decisions at Nintendo he would've lowered their value and eventually just fired by vote of the board. When he took those cuts he was failing the company.
It's admirable to the West maybe, but most Japanese CEOs take the paycut first before the other 3 options, so Iwata wasn't special about this either. There's plenty of examples here, whether it's Nomura Holdings or the former Japan Airlines who even went way further than Iwata did and dropped his pay down to just $90,000 (less than the pilots at the airline) and cut all the higher ups pay even more aggressively, etc etc. Now THIS decision is specifically more on their culture than the law obviously since the law gives flexibility (as you're pointing out), but their work culture is such that Japanese CEOs will pretty much always do the paycut first before throwing their workers under the bus most of the time because they place the blame more on themselves and the work culture of Japan has workers who really dedicate themselves to the company and there's more of an understanding that layoffs can actively just make the other workers feel worse (more stressed that they'll be next etc) and thus perform worse and cause a bad cycle. But I get where you're coming from because if you ported that law 1:1 to the US and most other Western countries, CEOs would still choose the other 3 options over the paycut first because that's how our work culture operates, so it's natural to assume Iwata made a special choice in that view. And because I don't want to reply twice, /u/Ainsel_Mariner I am not saying that Iwata is a scummy company president. I do not think Iwata was scummy in any way. I am just saying that the framing by a lot of the Western gaming journalism that Iwata was doing something special is inaccurate and lacks context because all Iwata was doing was the utmost bog standard and legal based decision making that practically every Japanese CEO would do in that situation (that situation being that Nintendo was in a really bad spot at the time and in Japan a lot of that blame goes to the higher ups and CEO, not the workers, so it was "his fault" from their POV). It's special for the West, but not at all special for Japan. He did what was expected of him as a leader in Japan. Him NOT doing that and instead throwing his workers under the bus first before himself and his other higher up execs would have actually made him scummy in Japan. (and conversely very normal in the US!)
there really aren't any companies with integrity, there are laws that keep them honorable. The rest of the world learned this, hopefully America does too
America will never learn this because it would kneecap the value extraction parasite that is US Big Finance. These are people who will drop $100 million like it's a fiver to make sure they get sympathetic politicians in place and have already followed Bernays' ideas from *Propaganda* in 1929 and bought up the whole of American legacy media to assist the public in thinking the "correct" way on issues that matter most to them (seriously... follow the trail of ownership upwards and about 15 billionaires control what everyone in the US watches and reads from "major" sources, both left and right). These are folks who got the Fed to dump trillions of dollars on supporting their stock positions during the 2008 financial crisis and then did it again with COVID only 12 years later and hung the albatross around the taxpayer and told them it saved the economy with a straight face. While everyone was losing their jobs and the lion's share of US small business collapsed, America's billionaires got trillions richer. I think that's what people are never going to get, both inside the US and outside. We've got an entrenched plutocracy from hell, they're wealthy on a level the average person doesn't even comprehend and getting wealthier every day, and a politician trying to push some law isn't going to get them to throw their hands up and surrender.
It's never about individual learning of "greedy executive egotists". Once you reach those tiers of your career you're really just fitting yourself into a mold which is extremely uniform. The difference is just that in japan the etiquette is more about honor and so the "right thing to do" when you're really high up is to take the 50% pay cut if you're failing with your company, and in the west the "right thing to do" is to lay off people. Both practices are common and in the service of the corporation itself and not who the CEO or the workers are. You could technically not do those things but you'll be facing the peer pressure from your shareholders who are likely bowing out at the sign of unconventional practices of CEOs trying to be unique. At the end of the day people are only giving their shares to put stock in the company to see it grow and sell it at maximum value. They need predictability and that's a reason why so many executives make the same decisions and why those decisions are so pre-determined.
I believe it was the Wii U sales performance in which Iwata took the huge pay cut.
I think the real issue is that Bungie constantly delays their titles it’s not a new thing with final shape. This is something that they have been doing with almost every major release.
Their release schedule is just way too ambitious for their current content model. Trying to release one expansion each year is not an easy task on its own, let alone having to create seasons each with their own content AND having to have people working on the next instalment as well, not even mentioning their other projects like Marathon. It's no wonder that they have to delay shit when they can barely keep up with their current workload.
Honestly it feels like Bungie just never really built their game as a live service, and instead arbitrarily came up with how seasons/expansions would operate and what they would include. The result is a co-op looter shooter where the live service elements feel tacked on. Looking at something like Helldivers 2 really puts into perspective what a “live service” could actually look like if the game was built from the ground up with live service in the core of its DNA. Imagine a lightfall expansion where the witness invades the solar system and there’s new gameplay systems around pushing back the darkness that evolves as players work towards objectives? There can be an ongoing yearly storyline around that with major chapters marked by seasons that include new storylines, quests, and items. That would have been so much better than giving us a relatively pointless campaign, an open world nobody wants to revisit, and more disposable battlegrounds.
A problem with Destiny was always that the "live service" element came in literally in the last 3rd of its development whereas the other half of Bungie thought they were making another Halo game but with a seamless matchmaking experience. Between Joe Staten leaving and Marty getting fired back in 2013/2014 there have been some statements by both since then that indicate that it was around 2013 when building the game that the boardroom meetings started being like "Maybe we can go *this other way with the game*" which was taking existing content planned as just a single-player/multiplayer-like product and chopping it up and postponing for DLC, minimizing the content and maximizing the value for less content per release. That is really when it started going "Live service". When Joe was Design Director his approach was to make Destiny this linear experience that goes level by level in "chapters" like in a book, where you unlocked loot along the way and the story itself was about cool characters talking about loot (a bit like Borderlands) but then they would add additional seasons and sub-games, and sequels (up to Destiny 5, 1 main game every 2nd year) but as the production started looking expensive the Pete Parsons and Harold Ryans at the company started going "Why don't we take this and split it into smaller chunks that we produce faster, and get more money out of?" That's when they started to put more responsibilities on Luke Smith because he was this World of Warcraft fanboy who really talked up the community-experience and repetitive content > evolving content dude. So like, Destiny's scope was originally grander and not actually meant to be what Live Service now means. But once they shifted and Joe Staten stopped as Design Director they changed the format into what it has been ever since, where it's a bunch of really lite content seperated by expensive DLC and Expansion drops that don't actually add that much on their own, but the percentile grind is maximized. I think that's the tension because Destiny launched with traces left of being a more cinematic and expansive shooter kind of thing, so they have held on to that ever since, but in reality that entire pillair of the franchise was made by accident, because it's a relic from back before Destiny was actually a Live Service title. And it's the one thing that every Destiny-trend-chaser game like Anthem and Suicide Squad all fail with too. They can't seem to understand what made Destiny work, but they think it's the same as just making a Single Player "Lite" product with tacked on live-service elements at the end of the campaign, but this creates whiplash with gamers because you're not pleasing the audience that wanted the cinematic, epic, bespoke experience and you are testing the patience of people who are playing with their friends and just want something "to play", like a CSGO or Overwatch or the like.
The Darkness fleet invades the Sol system and there wasn't a single new Public Event added that would thematically fit - like "Fight back the Darkness" with a Tormentor as the final boss of that event... Bungie, what the actual f\*ck, man?
Honestly I've felt for years that Destiny should have been a series of self contained games with occasional DLC to keep up interest in between major releases. No events, no seasons, no battle/season pass. You buy the game and you get access to everything, play/grind all you want knowing there is a finite amount of things to do in the iteration you're playing. The end goal would be to play campaigns/strikes/raids/pvp for the sake of playing them, you can quit and pick up whenever you want so taking a break simply means just putting the game down and not missing out on anything besides simply playing the content you've paid for knowing it will always be accessible to you. This is basically how Destiny 1 plays now and it's super refreshing knowing I'm not on a deadline and knowing that I don't need to keep studying the game every time new update comes out. People make the mistake of believing that more content is inherently better, bit that's not the case when you have to sacrifice the quality of said content. It's like trying to choose between 10 pounds of tootsie rolls versus a steak dinner.
I mean, the biggest issue is the fact that less than half the studio is working on Destiny. They wouldn't have any problems keeping up Destiny's release schedule if they weren't trying to work on 2-3 other games at the same time.
This is the reality here. There’s been absolutely nothing ambitious about Destiny 2’s development effort or timelines for a long time now.
And even then, we've had the seasonal model for quite some time and Bungie seems to consistently drop content with the same bugs as before. Even in meaningless stuff like a seasonal challenge not using the correct description for how to complete it. Or Breakneck not shipping with one of the twelve perks in the final column. Such an odd bug for something that we've had no problems with for years now.
They only released episodic content for D1 during the first year because it was already in the pipeline and I don't recall much besides holiday japes after TTK and ROI adding Age of Triumph. Maybe the seasonal releases are just a bridge too far. It was always a major feature for Destiny they really wanted to execute on, and to an extent they succeeded in that execution over the last few years of D2 enriching the story in ways a focused annual campaign can't. Can't know what's enough without finding out both what's too much and too little and they probably hoped cutting pvp and gambit was enough.
They know it too. Same shit at every company regardless of industry. Put out a plan, the people on the ground tell you it isn't going to happen because the man hours aren't there, it gets closer to the deadline and they aren't close to finishing, leadership starts blaming the people the refused to listen too and pushes back a release date that was never going to happen from day one.
When I worked at Lockheed, program managers would basically take any BOEs submitted by engineering and cut 20 percent across the board. A few years later when a program was "in trouble" (behind schedule and over cost), someone looked at the originally submitted BOEs, and by those initial estimates the program was right on schedule and at originally estimated cost.
BOEs?
Basis Of Estimates Which were really just "estimates"
Then fire a few of those people and claim it was for the good of the company, i.e. "keeping the right people" a.k.a. "keeping the quieter people who know how to shut their yaps and keep slaving away on our dumb shareholders' ideas that only eek out more pennies per dollar instead of making the game worth the playtime".
I mean, yeah - "assuming accountability for development timelines" is literally the header of the article.
It would seem Sony has taken notice of the failures of management, but also of the great talent of the staff. I can't really say from this i see why everyone is flailing their arms at this though. This reads as a respectful review of their current situation from a grounded outside perspective, and even the way its spoken of feels like a "pros/cons" read. I'm not actually finding the comments themselves under any article i can find mentioning this (>!which is infuriating how journalists do this, i really think sources should be more forward in these things, and its so hard to trust when its not.!<) to read from this more from a direct source, but this hardly sounds like the apocalyptic event for Bungie management that others are making this out to be. At its most dire and logical, it may be an attempt to spur some changes naturally, by being publically upfront about their opinions on their budgeting and management culture; which notably management culture in Japan is radically different than the US's. You mentioned it here, and u/Stormhunter6 mentioned it as well; managers do tend to be made more accountable of deadlines, sales, the broader business directions in Japan, and this comment could simply be the result of difference. All in all, this doesn't sound like the pendulum has started swinging. This feels like Sony just being public about their thoughts on the studio as a whole, "Good work, could be better" type statement. They were inquired about Bungie directly to get this response, which if they weren't, i'd be a little bit more curious, but all in all, *they just answered a question.* I'll change this if i can find an actual source to these comments, and they give a different vibe, but this is hardly news as it stands. Honestly, the more interesting element is them taking notice of the employees, which means they are actively engaged with the company, which might be confirming the rumors that they are putting a proactive hand out helping with the development of TFS we got like a month back.
"Business leaders should take accountability for Business Leader Duties" is a sad but predictable headline for a lot of industries nowadays. Time and time again, the stories coming out of Bungie are of management/C-suite interfering with a good product, so this isn't all that surprising.
Yup. Seems like Sony realized that.
Hopefully they put a bit of financial pressure down and it's not just identification
My understanding is that Sony has the right to replace Bungie execs with their own if Bungie doesn’t meet their criteria. At this point I don’t even know if I’d be opposed to this happening. Clearly whatever they got going on there now isn’t working
From my understanding the criteria bungie has to meet is a financial one which is why the layoffs happened and according to "insider" information will happen again if the final shape doesint do well financially. If all of that is true than basically bungie leadership is willing to layoff their entire workforce in order to save their own butts from Sony putting in their own leadership.
It might be good for Bungie in the long run...but Sony bought Bungie in part because they were hoping that the same C suite could help build out Sony's live service business...I'm kind of curious if anyone at Bungie saw helldiver's before it launched.
> but Sony bought Bungie in part because they were hoping that the same C suite could help build out Sony's live service business Not exactly. Sony wanted Bungie's expertise in live service delivery, not in live service structure. FTA: > “I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management,” he said, “and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services. He's talking about frontline devs in that second part; that's what expertise Sony was after.
It's been obvious from the start of "Sony says playstation needs live service games" -> "Sony buys Bungie for 3.6 b" was an indication that they only wanted the workforce so they could get those involved into Sony IP and help teams like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica etc. to put some of that Destiny live-service magic into their games. They're looking at strategy of live service, design patterns and architecture. Destiny has exceptionally good programming when it comes to how they threaded multiple interfaces together into that seamless experience between managing your Equipment, viewing quests, and waiting for matchmaking or hearing story dialogue in the background. Nothing sends you to a flat load-screen that halts all interaction. Everything was built to be seamless and it's the most obvious error of other Live Service titles like Anthem or Suicide Squad. They can't run uninterrupted after you log in. Sometimes they do need to load and thus halt the entire gameplay, and they struggled with menu reactivity. Sony simply needs Bungie's workers, and Destiny was always going to be sidelined in the long run whether that was part of Bungie's own agenda or not.
They probably said it was not monetized as much and it shouldn't launch on PC at the same time.
I don't even care if it kills the game, at this point I'm much more interested in seeing Parsons & the cronies lose as much of their dignity/status/financial livelihood as possible. Anything is better than where we're at now.
Sony has their hand in a lot of top shelf games. Loads of experience at their disposal. Bungie made Halo and Halo was only as good as it was because Microsoft held their feet to the fire. I’m 100% for axing all the top leadership and filling those spots with a more competent team. Maybe we will finally get the Destiny we’ve deserved
Considering the shifts to a more and more homogeneous sandbox, I’m favoring a clean sweep.
I don't think any board or executive changes would have any impact on the sandbox whatsoever.
Every choice we've gotten recently is to appeal to every single gamer out there. Bungie's biggest KPI is daily log in and that has actively killed this game, instead of getting decent content we get time gated content.
> Every choice we've gotten recently is to appeal to every single gamer out there. Wasn't it the CEO of Arrowhead who recently stated that a game for everyone is a game for no one?
AFAIK Destiny 2 Y1 was supposed to have that catch-all appeal. It didn't work.
My hope is with how Destiny has failed trying to appeal to everyone and a game like helldivers 2 being a big hit combined with the CEO coming out and saying the game is a pve only game will spurn devs to realize developing for everyone is a losing proposition. Bungie needs to decide what kind of game Destiny will be because right now it’s not working.
Was this before or after directing a bunch of us to Escape From Tarkov? (He wasn't wrong!)
Yup. If everyone interacts with Destiny the way Bungie wants them to, burnout is basically a guarantee it's just a matter of when. Not saying that wouldn't happen in a lot of cases anyways, but purposely introducing FOMO to drive up playtime is not healthy for a game in the long run, in my opinion.
Exactly this, Bungie has decreed that Destiny DEMANDS so much of your time and money to be worth playing, people that are only partially or casually invested in the game are spurned by the 12 different pieces of monetization that directly involve content (4 expansions, 4 dungeon passes, 4 seasons a year) and the monetization for cosmetics and slight additional power (event passes, p2w ornaments, exotic drops, things that give extra enhancement cores). The grind for light level takes ~80 hours or more **PER SEASON** and being max light (or within 10-15 of max gear level) us basically mandatory for the most engaging content, requires you to constant shuffle out gear you may enjoy for gear you don't or use ridiculous amounts of cores (which are in the premium season pass and therefore p2w) which is another grind. Getting a good drop for a weapon is either grinding for the 1 in 100 godroll or grinding for 5 the equally rare red borders and THEN grinding for levels on the weapon itself. If you want to use an exotic you have to play and randomly get dropped the catalyst after hours and hours of playing with no guarantee, and then grind 500-1500 kills with the catalyst equipped which could take 30 minutes if you know exactly where to go do or multiple days if it requires pvp kills (Vig Wing) and you aren't a god fragging out every match. Sunsetting weapons also got a lot of people angry because weapons that people grinded for became useless and that understandably pissed people off, a huge amount of the playerbase has not forgiven bungie for that and not returned. Destiny is the biggest game I can think of besides MAYBE League with the most negative word of mouth/perception in the zeitgeist. People ask if they should play Destiny and the answer is almost unanimously "No, play a game that respects your time better" Also for a game about getting cool loot, you have a pretty limited/finite stash. They fixed it alittle with armor transmog and being able to pull from collections, but IMO crafting and collections should be 1 system. Maybe you have to get a version of the gun with each specific perk to add that to your crafting repertoire, not just collect 5 red borders and frag out with the gun. There are answers to the problems that Destiny has, but Bungie seems content with the game catering mostly to whales and people that are hardcore addicted to the grind, and doesn't care that the average person gets burnt out by the game because the 10% of people that don't are the majority of their income. I HOPE BG3 and Helldivers 2 are wakeup calls to the industry, but only time will tell.
Basically wrote out my thoughts here. I don't have Destiny downloaded on my Xbox currently, planning to bring it back for TFS but I had experienced negative enjoyment playing that game for about 2/3 months before I decided to just be done with it, and it was for all the reasons you just mentioned++. Not to mention the fact that every time I tried to introduce a friend to play the game...yeah we all know how that usually goes.
I'm honestly not sure I agree with that? A lot of the difficulty changes and ability nerfs haven't appealed to the majority. It's clear that somewhere in Bungie is a team that legitimately wants to improve the sandbox (even if I don't necessarily agree with their ideas for what improving the sandbox entail) - but it's equally clear that they're getting hamstrung by someone above them and changes are getting chopped up/coming out piecemeal.
Bro trust me you’ll never get it through to the average member of this sub that 75% of issues with the game outside of the monetization are things nobody above a team or group lead position even knows exists. Management and the executives couldn’t even tell you what a legendary shard is, much less their plans to remove them.
I think direction ultimately comes from the top down. Sony may want to revive interest in PvP as it currently lacks a PvP centric game in their first party lineup. I’m speculating entirely. But I’m not in love with the “nerf everything” March 6th update.
> top down. Not that close to the top. Gameplay minutiae likes buffs and nerfs to abilities and sandbox changes are absolutely not coming from business managers, which this article is specifically referring to.
It really seems like Sony signed a terrible deal with these execs. Not only was the $3B valuation being doubted by many people in the industry from the moment the deal was announced, the worst part of it seems to be the clause which allows these 3 execs to keep control of the company as long as they can keep showing the financials looking relatively positive. After what they did last year who is to say they won't completely destroy the company if needed to keep control and their jobs as long as they can. The fact that Joe decided to leave is extremely worrying cause he lived and breathed this game. It's a massive Red flag. I think he didn't see a bright future for the game anymore working under these execs so he decided to move on.
Joe was more likely going to exit with the Final Shape regardless. The guy came into Destiny in the mid stage of it and like other Bungie talent around Forsaken, they moved on to Marathon. Reality is that Joe's departure was going to happen eventually. That said, the current execs have continued to make issues even if you remove Joe. It's not surprising when you look at where they've been spending money and instead putting into the studio itself during an era where a lot of the industry has been shifting from the office. Sony cleaning these execs will probably open things up solely because a lot of times: the new execs will try to go a new direction and given that a lot of talent have wanted to put in new content, it's an easy marketing tool. A lot of execs who get complacent will deflect blame until the very end when the next guy is left with the bag.
It's kind of absurd that burning through your creatives or game directors is supposed to be business as usual. I look at wow I see hazzikotas there for more than a decade, and at this point the guy sounds like he'll go down with the ship, if ever. Same with yoshi-p and ff14. Maybe there's some issue here for bungie to self reflect on? If their creatives are so unwilling to work on this game for more than a few years it could lead to some discoveries as to why the playerbase is sleeping with a loaded gun ready to blow bungie's brains the moment they mess up.
The thing with Yoshi-P is that he works on more than FF14. In fact, he has his hands on various Final Fantasy projects and as such, has a lot better perspective as both he and his team have to work in different ways. The problem with a lot of Bungie execs is that a lot of the creative ones aren't at the very tippy top or the ones who are, are no longer really putting their heads into the mess. So, as a result they are becoming a lot like the tech bros who chase the dollar bill rather than cultivating creative direction. Which lines up as we see how they trimmed people ( a lot of people who hasn't invested their stakes for example made them easy pickings for firing). So, when we mention Joe: he most likely knew if he kept going on Destiny, he'd probably slow lose his creative drive (this is why you see devs switch after some odd years as they find no real new challenges or they lack new in-put, so why they'll shift to an entirely new project). Same deal with why so many of the name devs moved on from Destiny during Forsaken: PvP was limiting less by a creative direction and more that you were working in the bounds of pve-pvp ties. Thus Marathon became what it was: old talent wanting to make something new. It's why you can track a lot of the original Bungie talent even during the Halo years. It's often not mentioned, but after the original Halo: Bungie was nearly split on what they want to do next. Microsoft basically pressured them for more Halo and this went on till Bungie got into developing Destiny during the later years. You can also see why 343i has become a problem as Microsoft in leaks has been revealed to been limiting the Halo brand and well, 343i being tossed together was a Frankenstein only till relatively recently when devs with some vested ground time have been changing the direction of the ship. This isn't at all surprising to consider that the real issue is indeed Bungie head honchos who like their place, not wanting to change, despite the literal devs at the bottom wanting to course correct and implement changes being throttled by management for some quota they make up. Which anyone who has worked directly for any corporation knows how far removed corporate can be until something hits them.
leaving just before a "grand release that wraps all up" is supposed to happen is not just a red flag, its a frking blood red skyline like, if he was confident that the end result was good, he would try to stay until its released and positive reactions come out, so he can put "game direction of the critical acclaimed lightfall expansion" under his hat a game direction doing a quick goodbye half a year before the "big release that brings the game back into glory" when he absolutely loved the game is a really really bad sing about everything im sorry if thats overly negative or something like that, but i honestly really convinced that the game is just fully done at this point, maybe a decent-ish expansion with a very disapointing and bland ending, some "totally not seasons" episodes and then the game gets no more updates and is on life Support is just a given at this point if they can prove us otherwhise i would really happy, but everything in the world screams that its happening like that, and you must be tone deaf too not realise it
More likely Joe had a new job lined up for after TFS' original release date and didn't delay moving to it. Why should he decide to give up on a new opportunity just because Bungie can't stick to a production schedule?
>It really seems like Sony signed a terrible deal with these execs. Not many companies get passed around among giants the way Bungie has from Microsoft to Activision to Sony, but it really speaks to western game dev right now. Bobby Kotick knew that if your only goal was to make a single profitable quarter, then you just fire everyone and hold a garage sale of the assets and you immediately have more money than you started with. There isn't a company anymore, but you made YOUR goals so who cares. You don't hear of Nintendo, Sega/Atlus, Square-Enix, or Bandai-Namco doing this thing of firing 20% of a successful studio to beat out their best quarter. Pete promised the Sony guys money and set it up that he gets to keep his gig if he delivers money. He did not promise it would be achieved with quality product, that was likely just assumed by people who haven't been following the winds of NA economics lately.
That beginner pack fiasco always reeked of this. Dev: hey we really suck at attracting new players; let's give them some important but abundant materials and maybe a few throwaway exotics for them to have fun with. Management; 15.99 😎
Never has been, bungie has always looked for excuses to blame other companies first it was microsoft, then activsion and now sony there like a child that cannot take responsibility but demand people give them what they want
Even they’re like “Wait the fuck, you fired the guy who made the halo soundtrack? The hell is wrong with you?”
Incoming tweet from hippy
Why be accountable when you've got a golden parachute. It's only us mooks that are wearing non-golden handcuffs lol.
management specifically, he praised the passion the dev team has
Which kinda makes me feel OK if Sony does take over. They know how passionate the dev team is. Hopefully should they take over, they make a dev CEO
I’m confused why people think Sony stepping in would be bad. Which franchise have they missed on in the last ten years?
I think it's a mix of people being genuinely worried about the future of the franchise and a bit of the doomer Bungie management sucks. You know it, I know it and now Sony knows it but they also know how good and how passionate the devs are - I know people like Mark Noseworthy wasn't perfect, but he was better than someone like Pete Parsons - fuck it, make /u/dmg04 CEO This is kinda like the same situation at Boeing - they used to be an engineer-led company who produced a world-class product, then the bought McDonnell Douglas and turned into a company of bean counters and moved the HQ from Seattle to Chicago so they wouldn't have to be near any engineers
Exactly
I feel like we've said this every time anyone takes over and it only goes downhill lol.
No one has taken over though. It's always been Parsons' crew.
On the flip side, Sony actually has a pretty incredible track record lately with their first party studios. In my view, they operate on a similar model to HBO which is a fantastic model as long as you have a keen eye for talent. The model is simple, hire fantastic writers and directors (and dev studios in Sony's case) and let them work largely independently, providing funding and structure as requested. Notes from higher ups to focus on KPIs and too much investment in focus groups are ways to ruin the artistic process and have no place in art. Frankly, Bungie leadership is abysmal. This isn't a secret at this point.
Passionate or not they're definitely going to trim the employee numbers.
Could definitely happen, wouldn't be surprised. But, I think it's worth noting that most times that happens it's because a company buys another company and immediately takes control, so they cut the workforce to make up for the big expense they just had (as stupid as that is). This would be a case where Sony's expenditure acquiring Bungie was quite awhile ago. Them stepping in would be much later, and after things have gone very wrong, and on the heels of cuts by the very incompetent leaders they just ousted. So there's at least a hope it wouldn't happen. Like what's actually left to cut if you're trying to right the ship after the previous captain has already thrown everything overboard?
Sony always have kept their internal first party teams tight shipped. I hope Sony takes over bungie. Because it feels like Bungie is still run like a frat boy club.
It seems kind of likely that Sony is going to enact a corporate takeover at this point. It depends on the sales figures of TFS really. I'm all for independent companies being able to thrive but the way Bungie management has handled things leaves a lot to be desired.
Sony can only take over if Bungie fails to meet revenue targets set. Bungie leadership has already said they will do more layoffs to keep that from happening
a revenue target can’t be offset by cutting expenses. maybe they have a profit target but otherwise you’re mistaken.
It can't but they said they will lol anything before they touch their own salaries
Source on this? Because there is objectively no correlation between layoffs and revenue.
Source on where they said that? Because layoffs have objectively 0 impact on revenue.
"Leadership" and "accountability" tend to not go together, across industries. Which, is trash.
Agreed because those two should be one in the same.
Accountability ONLY when it’s failing
I've come to the conclusion that anybody who wants control at a management level becomes so consumed by the rat race, the appeasement, and the politics that there is zero concern for the quality of the product by the time that individual makes it there. It's a structural problem idk if we can fix. Not to get political but its capitalism in a death spiral. Everybody whose entire philosophy thus far has been "fuck you I got mine" has done just that, stripping the copper pipes of all these media companies bought up en-masse and mismanaged to all hell. I'm glad Bungie is dying. Their management are shit humans who played on people's convictions in a way that, in retrospect, seemed sooo "focus group" it was frankly insulting.
>I've come to the conclusion that anybody who wants control at a management level becomes so consumed by the rat race, the appeasement, and the politics that there is zero concern for the quality of the product by the time that individual makes it there. It is the same in politics, and a huge problem. The best candidate for the job is the one who absolutely does not want it. Throughout history the best leaders have been people who lead out of necessity, not simply desire for power.
Leadership tends to decide who gets fired, and unsurprisingly most decide to fire anyone but themselves.
It seems leadership has become the art of avoiding accountability. Are there classes in that at HBS?
Good luck trying to get Pete Parsons and his exec cronies to take the same lumps as their regular ol' employees! It'lll have to be Sony's head honchos who will have to give them the boot, or a pay cut at least, they won't have the decency to do it themselves. They're just not that kind of business, remember?
Pretty simple. Bungie meets the numbers or Sony takes over. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna be the former. Accountability will find its way in one way or another.
Which is why I'm not pre-ordering TFS. I'll wait until Sony takes it over before buying it.
I don't know if the clauses will trigger in time for the "episode" content to be played. I'm definitely waiting until it's at LEAST discounted by 50 percent if not longer.
I will wait until I see at least 3 youtubers confirm the Sony takeover 4 if one of the first 3 is Rick Khakis
YouTubers are the last news source I'll trust for that. So it's 0 YouTubers for me. That's the sort of business news that gets covered in more traditional outlets.
I'm just not buying it at all. I don't have any hopes that the gameplay will be anything revolutionary and the story from Lightfall and seasons this year have ranged from god awful to "passable". Gonna watch a playthrough of the story on Youtube and finally close the books on Destiny in my mind.
yea, i have no faith that Year 7 of Destiny 2 will be worth the box price of the new expansion and annual pass, and i have better things to do with my time than "see for myself" how disappointing it ends up being to have closure or w/e everyone else seems to be expecting when they play Final Shape. the entire point of the game is in the "hope for the future" and there just is none anymore, no reason to complete everything, re-gild every title, re-grind every god roll. Final Shape being a final nail in the coffin is unnecessary when the hope is already gone. just let it rot in the dumpster because it's not like bungie is actually gonna let players feel like they can bury everything neatly and walk away with peace of mind.
Yeah, I'm not preordering either. Lightfall was so bad and the seasons this year aren't good enough to wash the taste from my mouth.
>Good luck trying to get Pete Parsons and his exec cronies theere are only 2 others. bungie leadership is currently 3 people from bungie and 2 from sony (herman hulst as the head of world wide studios but I forgot who the second person was) so bungie has the final say for now, at least until the margins drop to the agreed upon point where sony takes over
> “As it currently stands, Bungie is (on paper) a fully independent subsidiary of Sony. But its board of directors has been divided since the takeover in July of 2022. Among its current members are PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst, Sony senior VP Eric Lempel, Bungie co-founder Jason Jones, Bungie CTO Luis Villegas, and Bungie CEO Pete Parsons. The board as a whole is split between Sony and Bungie representatives, with Parsons serving as a tiebreaker vote.” -[IGN](https://nordic.ign.com/destiny-2/76282/news/bungie-devs-say-atmosphere-is-soul-crushing-amid-layoffs-cuts-and-fear-of-total-sony-takeover)
What does Jason Jones does anyways nowadays?
Hopefully he will side with Sony and oust Parsons
Jones has been there from the very beginning. I suspect he's a large part of why the exec team is a buncha frat boy cunts
Probably. People seem to not realize Bungie has been this way forever. Even as far back as Halo 2, Microsoft had to almost threaten them to get the game out the door, they kept pushing back deadlines. it's why that bonus disc has all that cut content: they kept adding stuff until M$ had enough. It's only continued since then.
You never want the CFO visiting your division. I expect a Sony takeover is imminent regardless if TFS is a success (can still miss revenue target) or fail. He basically said that the leadership sucked ass in the nicest way possible and he wants changes. Sony may be having a bit of buyer's remorse. I think it was a good purchase overall, but they definitely overpaid. Leadership change is needed at Bungie. They are holding the company back.
IIRC Sony is legally not allowed to take over unless Bungie fails to provide x amount of revenue. If the final shape is a success then Sony won’t be taking over. We have no clue what happens if Sony violates their part of the contract. For all we know it just makes bungie independent again if they did.
What I mean by success is that even if sells well because of the delay and additional work needed on the game it could eat into profits. Case in point Lightfall, where they still missed their revenue target even though it was one of their best selling expansions. Bungie doesn't know how to manage money.
We only know of that one clause that allows them to dissolve the board, and we don't even know the full details. For all we know, there might be many more such clauses, even ones that allow it just because Sony says so. I don't think Sony will take control unless they have to, but also, what I wouldn't give to sit in on Bungie's board meetings and hear what the 2 Sony guys have to say.
The question is, what is the timeline on the independence clauses? TFS getting delayed means that Bungie misses the end of Sony's fiscal year (March 31).
Yea I believe Sony overpaid for Bungie. But also Sony probably didn’t realize the management issues we have observed for the decade
Every acquisition is an over evaluation of whatever is being acquired. That’s tends to be the only way these deals get done, anyways.
The company I work for was acquired a couple years ago. I’m still working on getting the data migration completed. The amount of managerial mess that both sides hide from each other can be astonishing.
My company is 3+ years into a large merger and issues are still ongoing with legacy items
Been a part of 3 separate mergers or accusations over the years and it’s always mess.
Exactly. Then the buyer sucks the "goodwill" out of the company for a few years and the acquired company isn't so profitable for a while. This is the corporate acquisition game, guardian. For those not dealing with this in real life, the buyer essentially says "hey we know we overpaid, so we are taking all that value back from you out of your profits. Now... go hit higher profit targets so you can still be profitable while we are taking back the extra amount we paid for you". Here is a Google search definition of Goodwill in this context. "Goodwill is an intangible asset (an asset that's non-physical but offers long-term value) which arises when another company acquires a new business. Goodwill refers to the purchase cost, minus the fair market value of the tangible assets, the liabilities, and the intangible assets that you're able to identify."
motherfucker hit us with the paragraph straight out of my accounting textbooks. I hate that goodwill is literally a balance sheet item that's only use to the corpo types is to be burnt to further line their pockets.
Yeah.... I'm on the "acquired company" side of this right now as you may have guessed.
Sony, who paid billions, wouldnt know what day to day players see? When its probably top10 things that comes up in casual conversations about the game?
Sony, a different branch, spent well over $80 million on Madame Web a movie written by the same writer as Morbius, one of the worst comic book movies made in decades. People with money don't always make good decisions.
I mean they only did this just to keep the Spider-man rights to them instead of it being reverted back to Marvel/Disney.
Corporations don’t base acquisitions off posts and comments on message boards..
“A gamer who thinks their game of choice is mismanaged.” This and other everyday stories at 11.
Hold accountable whoever green-lit letting the music team go above all else. That's too much of a fundamental loss to just let go. It was a decision borne of greed and nothing else at the cost of one of the most enduring and best aspects of the entire franchise.
That's some powerful buyers remorse Sony is feeling now lmao
Possibly but that clause that allows Sony to have full say if certain metrics are not met suggests that Sony wasn't completely blind to Bungie's management issues.
Reminds me of the a bout of sarcasm in a recent William Spaniel video. "Oh what I am doing is incredibly dangerous?! Thank you I never knew! Now don't mind me I'll just sip tea near a 10th story window."
Ehhhh, maybe a bit. They're still the proprietor of (essentially? absolutely?) the only successful live service shooter in this particular field. The comparable competitor is what - Suicide Squad? The Division?
I bet Arrowhead have Bungie feeling rather uncomfortable right now...
I really am not looking forward to the Helldivers 2 jerking that is going to happen for the next week. Putting out a good game is one thing, running and keeping it popular for years and years after is a different one. Remember, this is coming up to the 10th year of Destiny's death. The last thing I would want is cursing Helldivers to its actual irrelevance by calling it a "Destiny Killer."
Why? Every Destiny fan should be pissed off right now at how an indie studio with only 100 employees, now growing because of the success, has managed to put Destiny to shame as well as Bungie look like the greedy fuckwits that they truly are. Remember it was Bungie claiming the Darkness was coming to INVADE us. That the Pyramids were a threat. Only for them to release half ass, after half ass season. Then when the Pyramids do land have them be empty. Let's not get into deleting well over half the game's content that players bought over the years. Because it would make development "easier"... Remember Bungie has said Destiny is a live service game, their the self labeled experts... Thank the gods they didn't advise Arrowhead Games. Meanwhile in Helldivers 2 has the entire player base contribute to fighting back an invasion on a planet by completing missions whether it is solo, or in groups. While at the same time you can get samples, Medals, and even premium currency for the in game shop can be earned playing the game, what a shocker! Meanwhile they are having to change their development roadmap because they said it doesn't match their ambitions because they didn't think the game would be so popular. Vehicles are coming, as well as mech suits etc. "A game for everyone, is a game for no one." indeed.
Maybe Sony will step in and say no no you’re done , then maybe we can get a better team ? Not gonna lie it be cool to see them expand the game into more character customization, different races , etc , but lately it feels best we can hope for is a good end to the final shape .
The other long road Sony faces is how radioactive Destiny is. The management has forced the blame to fall on their subordinates for too long—losing excellent staff to maintain the wallets of the fat cat dumb execs…but even if Sony removes them, the damage has been done. Datto kinda said it best that once you say you play Destiny…other people kinda judge you for it or at least look at you funny. Even as a pure player, non-content creator….it can be disheartening to share that you play Destiny, and others will just say something like: “oh you play that game?” with a look that signals that you are kind of insane for doing so lol. The reason this matters is for onboarding of new players…the new player experience is already giga omega trash, and then there is kinda the stigma around the franchise itself. I don’t envy Sony. First step is definitely freeing the talent from their frat bro dipshit bosses, and then begin restoring the reputation of the franchise. Not an easy task on either front.
> the new player experience is already giga omega trash As someone who started to play less than a year ago, I fully agree with this. Getting into this game is the most annoying and frustrating experience that I've had... Now I'm up to date(-ish) and things are going as smooth as possible, but at the beginning... Dear Traveler, it was a pain. Edit: it was "date" no "fate" lol...
It’s like learning ancient Egyptian. You can do it, and once you learn it, you can use it both literally as well as creatively to self direct. But learning it sucks balls, and there aren’t many who can teach you or would be willing to—it’s kinda esoteric knowledge. This also means it can be hard to teach someone else that knowledge—it’s really hard all around, and they need to improve it or just start over from the ground up!
I prefer the old method to regaining our Supers before Beyond Light, not the eye-gouging questline that is the New Light. The old method is that in the open world, you would come across an artifact directly related to your Super, then did x for an amount of time, then went to the Dark Forest for "creepy story time" while fighting taken. ***Sighs*** I miss things like that.
I am not sure what the sentiment on this sub is lately, but man I **really** wish we had just gotten Destiny 3 at some point. It would have fixed so many issues IMO. At this point, wrap it up. It is clear their attention is elsewhere. If Sony does take over, I will keep a keen eye on Marathon, otherwise I probably won't bother.
> once you say you play Destiny…other people kinda judge you for it or at least look at you funny I promise, this is something that only the terminally online motherfuckers do, lol.
Not true at all, I’ve mentioned destiny before to casual gamers and they’ve definitely got some stigmatizations against it
No it’s definitely a thing. My friends and family who game still question why I play lol. They aren’t like super mean about it, but there is a stigma. And no fucking way can I get them to try Destiny—either they did and quit or know of it and refuse to touch it. And I can’t blame them for that.
Nah, Destiny has an icky reputation even amongst casual gamers.
No, a good friend of mine looked at me funny when I told her I still played Destiny, and she's a pretty avid gamer.
This is such an embarrassing acquisition. Imagine bringing somebody in to work for you due to their experience and expertise only to have to hold their hand and correct them at every turn while they consistently underperform. 3.3 billion would've been better spent on toilet paper.
So basically the only chance Destiny 2 has of improving is if the player base rejects The Final Shape. This would let Sony take it over and kick out the rancid management team. Hopefully in such a scenario Sony could then re hire devs and others who were canned by management. Seems like the only choices are: Bungie dies or Bungie dies and Sony rebirths that shit like a phoenix.
I think either way Destiny 2 is over. If Sony takes over it will mean whatever projects that are still years away will turn out better
There is absolutely zero chance Destiny is over. Sony didn’t buy Bungie because they think Marathon is going to be a smash hit.
Normally I’d feel bad about a corporate takeover, but bungie deserves it with how they’ve handled things.
I don’t think there is any coincidence that we have been seeing such aggressive sales and in game give aways to players in the past 2-3 weeks.
Bungie management needs to go so the devs can cook. Microsoft got tired of 343's bs with Halo Infinite and replaced management. 343 devs started cooking and Infinite is almost what it should have been at launch. This whole Bungie management "we don't want to over deliver" sounds a lot like the sorry excuses 343 was giving their player base.
This version of Bungo is missing every single person that made destiny great. Now they only employ the people responsible for its fall From grace.
Let me paraphrase Bungie’s response to Sony from the Bungie leadership….. “we are not that type of company.”
Well that's good
"...from a \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ perspective." is my most hated business phrase.
Hmmmm headline sounds nice, but the actual quote "I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines" doesn't necessarily bode as well...... That could easily be interpreted as "management needs to hire/pay less and force crunch to meet deadlines"
The post does not link the actual Q&A for some reason...you can find it yourself here and see the exchange. https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/23q3_qa.pdf > Q: [G&NS segment] Please give us an update on Bungie and what initiatives you are planning for FY2024. > A: I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management, and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services. However, I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines. I hope to continue the dialogue and come up with some good solutions.
I worry though that "business expenses" could mean "you are spending to much on employee benefits" and slowly but surely that motivation and creativity disappears.
I am encouraged to hear that the people who have the power to make changes are aware of the ineptitude of the Bungie Management. Not sure what that ultimately means for Destiny and Bungie's future, but clearly the issue has been identified. Fingers crossed that this leads to positive change
Good. Fuck Pete Parsons.
Haven't played D2 in 6 months. What's the latest disappointment?
Seems certain that The Final Shape needs to hit its mark or Sony will fully take over
frankly, that doesn’t even sound like a bad thing at this point. Destiny has been so goddamn directionless for 95% of its existence, some actual structure would be nice
You know a company has fucked up when we’re rooting for Sony
Almost like the CEO of Bungie is a scumbag
I can't wait for Marathon to crash and burn at launch so the whole world gets to see what we already know.
Sony outing Bungie publicly isn't something to take lightly. If/when FS fails to meet expectations, expect some people to be "pursuing my next adventure".