Bungie and Activision parting ways

[Neon Ignition]

I just feel they're lining themselves up for a fall, there's a few long standing studios where they have a string of hits but without the cover of a big publisher/owner I doubt they'd survive and Bungie feels like a knife edge proposition. They'll need Destiny 3 to land big (doable but retaining users seems to be the issue) and a new hit beyond that which is hard at the best of times.

Interesting times for them, especially given the D2 situation and the impending impact of a new generation of consoles to consider.

For High Moon and Vicarious, knowing Activision one will get put on Call of Duty support and the other on making a Crash Bandicoot game

[Digfox]

Maybe. I don't know if they fully concentrate on a Netease project, or whether the Netease investment was to allow them to continue in-part with Destiny for a foreseeable time and then come up with a new project.

[Neon Ignition]

Hopefully, I've enjoyed each base Destiny game but the annual update design just doesn't work for the franchise. The series needs a complete revamp of its post-release support model but there's room to get a late cross-gen Destiny 3 out and salvage it, then come in with something fresh for next gen. If I was them I wouldn't waste too much time getting D3 out.

[Digfox]

As with many of these things I have more questions than the initial news story and unfortunately I think there are very few competent journalists who understand the questions to even explore them.

• But did Bungie instigate getting out of this contract?
• Did Activision trigger this and potentially looking for cost savings and doesn't want to invest so much in studios/IPs it has limited control over?
• Was the original 10-year contract up for renewal and it triggered this decision/agreement between the two parties?
• Is this a reaction to the Netease ownership of some Bungie stock?
• Does Activision own any Bungie stock either as part of this breakup or from previous contract penalties upon failing to deliver Destiny 2 on time?
• Did Activision want to take the IP in-house or offer to buy Bungie ownership-out but had no agreement on either?
• How bad were the missed targets from D2:Forsaken and did they predate this agreement?
• Have Netease offered to invest more in Bungie and therefore triggered some legal agreement where Activision had to make a decision on Bungie - similar to EA having to buy out Respawn Entertainment once Nexon offered to buy that developer?
• Has Bungie already courted another third-party for more investment?
• Does Activision retain any rights or first options for publishing (maybe physical) copies of future Destiny or Bungie games?

In theory Destiny 3 should have been on-course for this September. So I can't imagine Bungie has any capacity to do anything with D2. But of course who knows. Bungie may need to earn money in the interim unless it has found investment that allows it to not have to worry about short-term funding.

This also creates the anomaly of a non-Activision product having to be supported on the Blizzard PC client unless there is a agreement we don't know about where that has to be off the service at some defined point in the future.

[Asura]

Maybe they're about to announce a digital gaming shop platform. Burigin. Beam. BoG.

[Digfox]

Bungo.

Someone made the point elsewhere that an Activision in-house team did the port of D2 on PC so actually it may not be maintained by Bungie.

Either way I still can't work this out from the Activision side. What did they leverage or gain. Bungie's side has multiple possible reasons for this to have happened.

[fishbowlhead]

Bungo.

Someone made the point elsewhere that an Activision in-house team did the port of D2 on PC so actually it may not be maintained by Bungie.

Either way I still can't work this out from the Activision side. What did they leverage or gain. Bungie's side has multiple possible reasons for this to have happened.

Vicarious Visions did the pc port development along with all the upkeep including expansions for pc.

High Moon had to be brought in near ending of D2 vanila as bungie once again did a reboot a year from release.

CoO: High Moon has to be brought in again to finish it as bungie we’re months behind schedule.

Warnind: High Moon did most of it as apparently bungie hadn’t even started the programing.

Forsaken: bungie once again missing the release date and months behind schedule, once again high Moon brought in to save the dlc.

With all that Activision were simply cost cutting by letting bungie go, propping bungie up with 2 extra studios must of cost an absolute fortune. Honestly bungie sounds like a complete bunch of slackers sucking off others cash reserves while they f about not accomplishing much

[Digfox]

...the two in-house Studios (High Moon and Vicarious) that had worked on Destiny content.

Vicarious Visions did the pc port development along with all the upkeep including expansions for pc.

High Moon had to be brought in near ending of D2 vanila as bungie once again did a reboot a year from release.

...

Indeed, I didn't miss them! Although ta for the detail.

Even so Activision wouldn't have provided those resources for free, there are probably likely changes that had to be made (MTX) to the game or penalties on the contract. Even with all of that we know Destiny 1 and 2 were financially successful so even if D2:Forsaken missed targets was it unprofitable?

It's possible Activision has received payment or other options in order to allow the contract to be terminated or bought out but it still feels as if we are missing something here.