Bungie splits with Activision; retains ownership of Destiny IP

[Deleted member 25671]

Overall this sounds like good news, but it's pretty hard for me to know what exactly will come of it. I can only assume the two big issues Activision created with Bungie were the harsh microtransactions and the content drop schedule. However certain design decisions were probably on Bungie, like two primaries and a heavy, lack of bounty tracking or a quest log, no lore anywhere; which in the end I feel hurt the game more than the Eververse. I still love destiny for what it is, and I play it regularly (plus Forsaken has been amazing), but I'm also cautions cause Bungie made enough of their own mistakes. I'm pretty sure Activision studios did a lot of heavy lifting for Bungie in dlc production, so I do wonder how that might hurt Bungie since they did help make some quality stuff.
I'm excited to see where this goes, I do hope it just means a better product overall cause I do enjoy playing the game.

 

[Deleted member 224]

League of Legends, Fortnite, and PUBG (three of the most successful and regularly streamed games of the generation) are all self-published.

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I wouldn't consider PUBG AAA (certainly not at launch). And both LoL/Fortnite are F2P. Warframe is also F2P

It'll be interesting to see the form that future Bungie games take.

 

[Deleted member 35502]

I'm not quite sure why so many believe that Activision was behind the microtransaction stuff in Destiny. It's a proven monetization model and it's really not hard to see why Bungie would want it.

What I don't believe they wanted is the yearly release schedule with planned sequels. I'm seriously hoping that Destiny 3 serves as a new foundation for an evolving game. Paid expansions are fine, but the game would really benefit from just picking a base and building on it instead of resetting every few years.

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The mtx model started because Bungie was behind on revenue due to Activision. They were trying to bridge the gap.

 

[Rade]

Sorry guys, just to make sure, Jim Sterling is incredibly naive to think that Destiny 3 will reduce MTX just because Activision is not publishing right? I know his whole shtick is the whole "Insert AAA publisher" is the devil, which is frankly a shit and work out crusade, but he seems to think that only Activision is to blame for Destiny's problems and Bungle can do no wrong.

 

[Nooblet]

League of Legends, Fortnite, and PUBG (three of the most successful and regularly streamed games of the generation) are all self-published. Warframe is not nearly as popular/successful, but is one of Destiny's peers and also self-publishes.

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None of those are traditional $60 AAA titles though.
And except for Fortnite all those games didn't start out as AAA IP from AAA developers.

 

[Deleted member 224]

I think Bungie will either have to partner with a publisher (eventually), or make Destiny F2P

 

[Drey1082]

The game they're working on now is the big follow-up to the post-credits tease in Destiny 2, which I believe was meant to be the physical manifestation of the Darkness. I honestly do not think that's going to be rolled into Destiny 2.

I mentioned this in another thread but I'm going to make a prediction that might sound like a big undertaking but I truly believe that Bungie is thinking something along these lines.

I think Bungie knows that a separate sequel ended up being a mistake but at this point, it might be too convoluted to simply use Destiny 2 as a base going forward, especially as we are at the end of the console generation.

Because of that, I believe Bungie is working on "Destiny 3" to release in fall 2020 alongside the next generation of consoles. It will be marketed as the ultimate and final "version" of Destiny -- it will not only include a new campaign that acts as the "epic conclusion" to the fight against the Darkness but it will include the majority of areas and content from Destiny 1 and 2. In other words, this will be the game that many players thought we would be getting with the original Destiny --- an always changing universe that new planets are added to over the years. I can even see this PS5/Scarlet game simply being called "Destiny."

Perhaps unlikely, but I think something like that is what Bungie wants to do.

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This is possible, and a very interesting prediction. I actually pretty much agree with all your points, except I do think they will roll the darnkness stuff into the current D2 engine. I think the next big content update will include all of the D2 content, meaning there won't be any reset (all weapons, previous content rolls forward). However, the marketing effort will be framing this new content as a destiny reboot and the "2" will be dropped leaving it just "Destiny".

They might even start to slowly roll back in old d1 content at some point. I think the mission to the cosmodrome recently was a precursor for this.

Hence, Destiny 2 becomes the platform, and the 2 is dropped going forward.

 

[Bold One]

They want to work on Destiny.

There is an official blog post from Bungie.

The link is in the OP.

My head hurts.

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I noped out, m8

 

[GoldCartridgeGamer]

So my question now is will all future purchases of Destiny content still have a split between Activision and Bungie until Destiny 3?

 

[EloquentM]

On the upside, if this is the end of Destiny, more people will return to GOAT Destiny - 3rd year Destiny 1. Better raids, better strikes, better weapons, better armor design.

For the easily outraged, yes, I know it's not the end of Destiny. Dare to dream though.

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Triggered

 

[Soulstoner]

Sorry guys, just to make sure, Jim Sterling is incredibly naive to think that Destiny 3 will reduce MTX just because Activision is not publishing right? I know his whole shtick is the whole "Insert AAA publisher" is the devil, which is frankly a shit and work out crusade, but he seems to think that only Activision is to blame for Destiny's problems and Bungle can do no wrong.

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What reason does he have to believe otherwise? Activision literally said in earnings calls that it was going to increase the amount of MTX in Destiny just because they wanted higher numbers, much like the game of Destiny itself.

 

[Deleted member 224]

What reason does he have to believe otherwise? Activision literally said in earnings calls that it was going to increase the amount of MTX in Destiny just because they wanted higher numbers, much like the game of Destiny itself.

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Bungie now has less financial and development support working on any future Destiny games. Bungie is a 700 person strong studio and the next Destiny game will probably cost a fortune to make. Now that they don't have the support of Activision, how will they ensure their profitability and existence?

You think they'll focus less on microtransactions and take even more time developing their games?

 

[Soulstoner]

Bungie now has less financial and development support working on any future Destiny games. Bungie is a 700 person strong studio and the next Destiny game will probably cost a fortune to make. Now that they don't have the support of Activision, how will they ensure their profitability and existence?

Click to shrink...

Same as every other developer before the introduction of MTX's? How does CD Project Red do it?

 

[Dreams-Visions]

you have to spend money to make money, and the combination of not making enough, not spending on what's in the pipeline, and opportunity costs of having 2 of their studios work on something else means Activision could stand to gain more.

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Sure but again: the issue wasn't that Bungie was somehow not making enough money. Activision is greedy as fuck and it's well known. They weren't happy making *good* money; they wanted *great* money. Through MTX.

It's important that distinction is made. Some posts read as if Bungie was *losing* money. It was not. It was a very successful IP and continues to be a very successful IP. Activision's disappointment was about them not getting extra, free money by selling shit like red dot sights for real world cash like BLOPS4 does. That's all. Bungie clearly didn't want to be part of that game with them anymore and their neglect of the in-game MTX store makes that very clear. There is almost nothing in Destiny 2 that can't be had through just semi-regular play over the course of the season. I think there have been maybe 5 or 6 skins introduced in the 1.5 years that the game has been out that had to be bought with real world cash. That was undoubtedly a major point of contention and disdain from Activision.

 

[carlosrox]

We'll see if Bungie can make something I don't consider just average/decent at best.

 

[Stock]

Since it was Activision who finally brought Destiny to the PC market through their Beenox devs. I wonder if this split with the publisher doesn't bode well for the future of Destiny on the PC. That'd be a shame since the PC port really is the best version of the game.

 

[Rade]

Bungie now has less financial and development support working on any future Destiny games. Bungie is a 700 person strong studio and the next Destiny game will probably cost a fortune to make. Now that they don't have the support of Activision, how will they ensure their profitability and existence?

Click to shrink...

That's what I mean, I mean ignoring the reports which indicate that the microtransactiosn and development troubles coming from Bungie and not Activision, which also doesn't fit into Jim Sterling's crusade, how does Bungie expect to self publish a multi million dollar game with over 700 employees, without microtransactions, or any other method to generate money, you have to be either incredibly naive, or incredibly stupid to not see that.

 

[EloquentM]

Right now the most popular game in the world, Fortnite, is a self-published client that is free to download a la carte, supports crossplay parallel PvE and PvP modes, is rapidly iterated through a regular update schedule, and is supported through a mix between seasonal content passes (that promote regular engagement) and cosmetic purchases.

If you want to know what Bungie is thinking for the future of Destiny, IMO that's it.

Destiny's peers, like Warframe, already embrace a similar model, and build onto a base game with regular updates when they are ready (instead of annual releases bound to retail, with all of the baggage that kind of release entails). I don't know how far along D3 is, but I imagine this move telegraphs that D3 will be a Destiny client, and all future content will be a part of it.

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I like you

 

[Marcus Brutalius]

None of those are traditional $60 AAA titles though.
And except for Fortnite all those games didn't start out as AAA IP from AAA developers.

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Hmmm....what about F2P Destiny 3 BR?

 

[Nooblet]

Bungie now has less financial and development support working on any future Destiny games. Bungie is a 700 person strong studio and the next Destiny game will probably cost a fortune to make. Now that they don't have the support of Activision, how will they ensure their profitability and existence?

Click to shrink...

Not to mention the entire reason Bungie asked for mtx to be implemented was because they couldn't put out content quickly and they needed a revenue stream.

Now sure you can say that without Activision they won't have the pressure of putting out content and as such don't need to have a sustained revenue stream either BUT remember that Destiny is a service based game. A service based games lives and dies by how frequently and how substantial its content launch schedule is after launch. And when you compare Destiny's content output to its peers you can see that its peers are pushing are pushing the content at the same amount of frequency and size (if not more) while being a much smaller studio and not having any outside help from several other studios like Bungie did in Destiny's case (I bet that without Activision we wouldn't even have had a PC version of Destiny 2 since Vicarious Visions did that). A Destiny game that has an even less frequent content rollout than what we currently have will just not be sustainable that much I can say with absolute certainty because the market for GaaS is very competitive.

What I do expect from Bungie from hereon is mtx but with no paid DLCs. Activision is one of the only few publishers out there that does mtx and expensive paid DLCs both at the same time for their service based games whereas the industry in general now does free content with mtx (like Warframe, Ubi with Siege and The Division 2) or mix of low priced and free content with mtx (like Ubi again with AC and The Division 1). And Destiny DLCs being priced is something I am confident I can blame Activision for.

 

[ZeoVGM]

This is possible, and a very interesting prediction. I actually pretty much agree with all your points, except I do think they will roll the darnkness stuff into the current D2 engine. I think the next big content update will include all of the D2 content, meaning there won't be any reset (all weapons, previous content rolls forward). However, the marketing effort will be framing this new content as a destiny reboot and the "2" will be dropped leaving it just "Destiny".

They might even start to slowly roll back in old d1 content at some point. I think the mission to the cosmodrome recently was a precursor for this.

Hence, Destiny 2 becomes the platform, and the 2 is dropped going forward.

Click to shrink...

This probably is more realistic actually. I'll amend my prediction:

- Content from the Annual Pass will continue through the summer in Destiny 2.
- In the fall, we'll get a smaller expansion similar to Rise of Iron. Maybe another Annual Pass.
- What would have been Destiny 3 will launch in fall 2020. It will be an expansion/update to D2 on current consoles but they will drop "2" form the title and simply call it Destiny again.
- This "ultimate" version of the game, simply called Destiny, will get a retail release alongside the next generation consoles. This version of the game is now the singular version of Destiny that will be uploaded throughout the PS5/Scarlet generation. Bungie will let it be known there will be no more "sequels." This is Destiny.

 

[GustyGardens]

Yeah the fact that so many people itt think it's possible and benificial for their games is suprising. This has to impact their plans for Destiny 3.

Have we even seen a single traditional $60 AAA title self published by a studio this generation? Because I don't think we have.

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What about The Witcher 3? That's, arguably, one of the biggest games this generation.

 

[jviggy43]

The mtx model started because Bungie was behind on revenue due to Activision. They were trying to bridge the gap.

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No they were behind on revenue because they agreed to the terms they signed for. People in here need to stop acting like Activision forced them to sign the deal they made.

 

[Deleted member 224]

Same as every other developer before the introduction of MTX's? How does CD Project Red do it?

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So... Destiny is an always online service based franchise. Players expect regular content drops. New weapons/armor, new strikes, new enviornments, new raids.

I would also wonder how large CD Project is and how much their games cost to develop.

Edit:plus whatever outside (not their games) revenue they generate.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

I think Bungie will either have to partner with a publisher (eventually), or make Destiny F2P

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I agree and I think F2P would be a great direction. Particularly if they are not bound to console cycles.

 

[Bold One]

Not keen on f2p tbh

 

[Marcus Brutalius]

For those dreaming of a Bungie return to Halo. Why, exactly? Halo 5 MP is great, right? And Bungie hasn't done a stellar SP campaign since CE. Yeah, I'm going all in with the hot takes: I had more fun with Crysis 2 than with Halo 3 SP or Reach.
And what do you expect after all those years? It's like expecting Dark Side of the Moon Part 2 or Animals 2 from 1990s Pink Floyd - the best you can hope for is The Division Bell Halo, which might be better than nothing for some people, but I'd say "just let it go".

 

[Lima]

What about The Witcher 3? That's, arguably, one of the biggest games this generation.

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Eh CD Project Red has the whole revenue stream of GoG to fund them during development. No other indidipendet company has that revenue stream to rely on tbh.

 

[Drey1082]

This probably is more realistic actually. I'll amend my prediction:

- Content from the Annual Pass will continue through the summer in Destiny 2.
- In the fall, we'll get a smaller expansion similar to Rise of Iron. Maybe another Annual Pass.
- What would have been Destiny 3 will launch in fall 2020. It will be an expansion/update to D2 on current consoles but they will drop "2" form the title and simply call it Destiny again.
- This "ultimate" version of the game, simply called Destiny, will get a retail release alongside the next generation consoles. This version of the game is now the singular version of Destiny that will be uploaded throughout the PS5/Scarlet generation. Bungie will let it be known there will be no more "sequels." This is Destiny.

Click to shrink...

Completely agree. I think some new story stuff will happen in the fall like you mentioned. The annual pass is an experiment that hasn't played out yet, so how they move forward depends directly on the annual pass's reception.

 

[Marcus Brutalius]

What about full mmo direction with a monthly fee?

 

[Lowrys]

Not a Destiny fan but Activision are fucking awful, so this is a great result. It's naive to think that their future games won't have MTX, but hopefully this time they'll be able to produce more and better content to go with it, without being tied to an absurd schedule for sequels.

 

[TheGhost]

What about full mmo direction with a monthly fee?

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Only if they let us play as The Fallen and Hive

 

[TheDutchSlayer]

Same as every other developer before the introduction of MTX's? How does CD Project Red do it?

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Salaries are more then 50% cheaper in Poland.
That is why CDPR can make AAA games and still make money.
If CDPR was placed in San Francisco it would have been out of business years ago.

 

[Bold One]

Eh CD Project Red has the whole revenue stream of GoG to fund them during development. No other indidipendet company has that revenue stream to rely on tbh.

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That and the Polish government

 

[Green Marine]

So is there much reason to believe the monetization or pricing schemes will change with Activision out of the picture? I don't doubt that much of it was influenced by their revenue demands, but I'm also not sure why any of it would suddenly evaporate. Bungie has a massive headcount, and there isn't some golden goose revenue stream to rely on like a distribution platform or an engine to earn royalties from. I can see them taking a bit more time with the initial Destiny 3 product launch instead of hitting an imposed deadline for it, but I don't see how much changes once the game is out and they need to start bringing money from various aspects of the product.

 

[Scuffed]

I agree and I think F2P would be a great direction. Particularly if they are not bound to console cycles.

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I think this is the best direction. Warframe makes it work so I'm sure they can make it work for Destiny. Having a character that you can continue to build without it being in the back of your mind that they are irrelevant with the next iteration can go a long way.

 

[Nooblet]

Eh CD Project Red has the whole revenue stream of GoG to fund them during development. No other indidipendet company has that revenue stream to rely on tbh.

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I know one that does their name starts with V and ends with E. But they probably aren't interested in making games as much anymore. (Yea I know Artifact just came out)

 

[bsigg]

I'm curious if this could promote Bungie trying to get crossplay going for D2 or their next title with Playstation and Xbox? Seems like a good time to try and unify the player base.

 

[Marcus Brutalius]

Wait, I said this as a joke, but mmo would actually be a good fit for Destiny.
Lock cool stuff behind level progress old-school-style but in a fair manner, so that the average player will have to stay subbed.
On the other hand Bungie is forced to deliver good content on a regular basis to keep the subs up.
...and if you really think about it Fortnite is a subscription based game as well. At least for those teen-brainiacs with their
never-ending thirst for ugly looking skins.

 

[carlosrox]

Did Activision even fight for them?

Or is this kinda like them just getting dropped?

 

[ZeoVGM]

Completely agree. I think some new story stuff will happen in the fall like you mentioned. The annual pass is an experiment that hasn't played out yet, so how they move forward depends directly on the annual pass's reception.

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My mind is kind of racing now with small little things Bungie could do to make a process like that even better for fans.

Perhaps they could finally bring the majority of emotes from Destiny 1 back into the game. Just open up an emote store and newer players can use silver to get the D1 emotes. With older players, having your account linked to Bungie.net will read what emotes you had in D1 so you don't have to buy them again. Seriously, I just want everything from D1 back. (I realize that due to recent lawsuits, we might never see certain emotes return.)

 

[pants]

Not keen on f2p tbh

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It probably wouldn't look too dissimilar from what we have now. Granted Destiny 2 has already been given away for free recently (PS+ and Bnet come to mind), the question just comes down to what they charge for and what they don't. Obviously an entire singleplayer campaign is too much to just give away for free, but I can imagine a system where you pay $20 or $40 for something on the scale of Forsaken and everything from the prior release is made free for everyone else. Hell, I'd support that model.

Crucible maps are free for all players regardless of what they've paid for, which proved to be a great boon for the Crucible population. I think you could make both Gambit and Crucible completely free for anyone who downloaded Destiny and it would be a blessing to the overall player population, which in turn would create a better experience for everyone. Crossplay between Xbox and Playstation (and Switch!) would also help.

 

[nekkid]

Bungie - We want to self-publish our future games.

Random dude with a Juventus logo on the internet who has no insight in Bungie's funds - Yeah they are lying because they have not enough money.

Who am I going to believe?

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I laughed at this more than imagine you intended.

They've already filed licensing for the their new IP, Matter.

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Isn't that their mobile thing?

 

[Marcus Brutalius]

Did Activision even fight for them?

Or is this kinda like them just getting dropped?

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Just my 5 cents. I assume that Activision has come to realize that in Destiny's case Gaas does not equal guaranteed unlimited growth and safe, easy money. It think they're ok with this.

...that's BO4 money.

 

[Lima]

I know one that does their name starts with V and ends with E. But they probably aren't interested in making games as much anymore. (Yea I know Artifact just came out)

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Oh yeah Valve. I certainly forgot to mention them. Though they are kinda in a league of their own.

 

[jviggy43]

What reason does he have to believe otherwise? Activision literally said in earnings calls that it was going to increase the amount of MTX in Destiny just because they wanted higher numbers, much like the game of Destiny itself.

Click to shrink...

They said that after Bungie had gone to them and asked to restructure the game to be mtx driven rather than content driven. Literally from bungie. Its been posted in here several times.

Not to mention the entire reason Bungie asked for mtx to be implemented was because they couldn't put out content quickly and they needed a revenue stream.

Now sure you can say that without Activision they won't have the pressure of putting out content and as such don't need to have a sustained revenue stream either BUT remember that Destiny is a service based game. A service based games lives and dies by how frequently and how substantial its content launch schedule is after launch. And when you compare Destiny's content output to its peers you can see that its peers are pushing are pushing the content at the same amount of frequency and size (if not more) while being a much smaller studio and not having any outside help from several other studios like Bungie did in Destiny's case (I bet that without Activision we wouldn't even have had a PC version of Destiny 2 since Vicarious Visions did that). A Destiny game that has an even less frequent content rollout than what we currently have will just not be sustainable that much I can say with absolute certainty because the market for GaaS is very competitive.

What I do expect from Bungie from hereon is mtx but with no paid DLCs. Activision is one of the only few publishers out there that does mtx and expensive paid DLCs both at the same time for their service based games whereas the industry in general now does free content with mtx (like Warframe, Ubi with Siege and The Division 2) or mix of low priced and free content with mtx (like Ubi again with AC and The Division 1). And Destiny DLCs being priced is something I am confident I can blame Activision for.

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This

 

[Bold One]

It probably wouldn't look too dissimilar from what we have now. Granted Destiny 2 has already been given away for free recently (PS+ and Bnet come to mind), the question just comes down to what they charge for and what they don't. Obviously an entire singleplayer campaign is too much to just give away for free, but I can imagine a system where you pay $20 or $40 for something on the scale of Forsaken and everything from the prior release is made free for everyone else. Hell, I'd support that model.

Crucible maps are free for all players regardless of what they've paid for, which proved to be a great boon for the Crucible population. I think you could make both Gambit and Crucible completely free for anyone who downloaded Destiny and it would be a blessing to the overall player population, which in turn would create a better experience for everyone. Crossplay between Xbox and Playstation (and Switch!) would also help.

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The production effort that goes into gear, weapons, armour and diverse locations cant be compared with fortnite.

 

[Deleted member 2172]

Exactly. The naivety displayed on here is shocking.

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Yeah because if someone doesn't agree with your speculation on this its obviously naivety and not just a different stance on the matter. Soooo shocking!!!

 

[Nooblet]

The production effort that goes into gear, weapons, armour and diverse locations cant be compared with fortnite.

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Warframe is comparable in that terms though.
And let's see if Anthem is but that game and Bioware are an unknown quantity in this space.

 

[dex3108]

Right now the most popular game in the world, Fortnite, is a self-published client that is free to download a la carte, supports crossplay parallel PvE and PvP modes, is rapidly iterated through a regular update schedule, and is supported through a mix between seasonal content passes (that promote regular engagement) and cosmetic purchases.

If you want to know what Bungie is thinking for the future of Destiny, IMO that's it.

Destiny's peers, like Warframe, already embrace a similar model, and build onto a base game with regular updates when they are ready (instead of annual releases bound to retail, with all of the baggage that kind of release entails). I don't know how far along D3 is, but I imagine this move telegraphs that D3 will be a Destiny client, and all future content will be a part of it.

Click to shrink...

That's the issue Bungie is not capable of fast iterations currently. They will need to change a lot to do it.