Bungie to revive Destiny 2 and ‘evolve’ Marathon as it admits losing fans’ trust

Destiny 2’s early content is making a comeback (Bungie) After the outcry over Destiny 2’s final update, Bungie is looking to win back players by restoring old raids and campaigns to the game. Between multiple rounds of layoffs and Marathon’s struggles in attracting an audience, the future of Bungie has been a worrying unknown for some time. This was only compounded when the studio announced it will no longer support Destiny 2 with new updates after June this year. The decision led to a massive surge in players on Steam, which went way beyond the player counts of its latest game, Marathon, on PC. Now, three months later, Bungie studio head Poria Torkan and head of product Josh Deane have released a surprisingly candid blog post and video on the studio’s future, admitting that they lost players’ trust. ‘Bungie has been creating games for over 30 years and we have welcomed the communities that have formed around them,’ the blog post reads. ‘Over the last few years, we lost sight of that, and there have been real consequences. We lost trust, we lost incredible colleagues, and we lost sight of what we should be prioritising most, our players. ‘As a new leadership team, we must own that. We aren’t just listening to feedback, we understand your disappointment. We are not asking you to trust what we say today. We know that trust must be earned through the quality of our games, the decisions we make, and how consistently we show up for players.’ Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Bungie goes on to address the response to the final update for Destiny 2, stating that it had a ‘real impact’ on the studio. ‘Destiny is foundational to Bungie’s future,’ they added. ‘We have more stories to tell, new worlds to build, but we have to do it right and give our teams the time they need to do justice to this amazing universe. All of this is to say, we are not done with Destiny.’ Bungie doesn’t explicitly say it’s working on a new Destiny game, but it is planning to bring back old Destiny 2 campaigns, locations, and raids. In 2020, Bungie introduced the Destiny Content Vault, which was a system designed to cycle content in and out of Destiny 2 in order to keep the file size manageable. However, by making some of its best campaigns and raids inaccessible, it rubbed many people the wrong way. Now, Bungie is looking to bring back vaulted Destiny 2 content for all Destiny 2 players. However, the studio said it will ‘take time’ because some of the older campaigns require updates to ‘meet the stability and gameplay standards of Destiny 2 today’. Bungie describes this restoration as the ‘first step to lay the foundation for how we reforge into new stories and games that you all deserve’, with more details on the vaulted content promised in the coming months. In the same post, the studio acknowledged Marathon’s struggles, saying it ‘did not reach as many players we had hoped’ despite the strong critical reception. It also described the title as something which was ‘never intended to replace Destiny’. To boost Marathon’s appeal, Bungie plans to ‘evolve’ it ‘beyond the genre constraints we placed on it’ – which suggests it will expand from primarily being an extraction shooter. It’s already experimented with various other modes, with a casual PvP mode called Sponsored Survival introduced in June, while a permanent PvE mode is set to arrive later this year. To round off the post, Bungie states it has made various internal changes within the studio, including ‘simplifying our priorities, reducing competing initiatives’ and ‘changing how we measure success to place greater emphasis on player satisfaction’. ‘There is still a great deal of work ahead and challenges to overcome, but we believe deeply in this studio, our people, and the games we are building,’ they added. ‘But belief is not enough. It’s on us to prove progress through what we deliver. Thank you for continuing to challenge us, and for caring so deeply about the worlds we create. Keep holding us accountable. We are ready to do the work.’ While this all sounds promising, these decisions and frank statements aren’t exactly a great indicator of the studio’s current health, especially as poor management has been repeatedly blamed for the studio’s failings. The brief mention of a ‘new leadership team’ may indicate an attempt to address that problem, so we’ll have to wait and see if these changes have any positive impact on Bungie in the months to come, but at least it seems to allay the worst fears, that Sony would shut the studio down completely. Marathon is getting a big update in December (Sony Interactive Entertainment) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. 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