It’s been an intensely troublesome few months both for Destiny 2 and its creator Bungie. In July, more than 220 Bungie employees were laid off, while a further 155 were moved to other roles within Sony Interactive. Despite the launch of The Final Shape expansion back in July, player sentiment has also grown measurably worse. As it stands, Destiny 2 has a ‘mixed’ rating on Steam based on recent reviews, and has lost a significant amount of its player base, at least on Valve’s platform. Now, a former Bungie employee lifts the lid on how the Sony acquisition has “forced” Bungie to change its approach to Destiny 2, and suggests that several upcoming changes may actually help the troubled multiplayer FPS.
Immediately after the launch of The Final Shape, Destiny 2 hit just over 314,000 concurrent players on Steam, nearly beating its all-time record on the platform. Naturally, there is going to be some drop-off, as players who have logged in and had their fill of the expansion summarily log back off. But the FPS game has faced challenges from elsewhere, not only in the form of layoffs, but also accusations of plagiarism leveled by external artists. In a recent post, Julian Faylona, a fan whose artwork was used in a Destiny 2 cutscene, and who was last year promised compensation by Bungie, claims that that compensation has yet to arrive.
Now, Donald McGowan, who served as Bungie’s general legal counsel until 2023, and worked also on games including Gears of War and the Halo series, discusses some of the problems they perceive within Bungie and how Sony’s acquisition of the studio, which was finalized in 2022, may help the Destiny 2 make to improve.
“Much though it pains me to say this, it appears that Sony’s inflicting some discipline on my former colleagues may have forced them to fix the things that were wrong with their game,” McGowan says. “To be clear: I’m not talking about the layoffs, I’m talking about forcing them to get their heads out of their asses and focus on things like implementing a method of new player acquisition, not just doing fan service for the fans in the Bungie C-suite, and running the game like a business. Good. I still have friends in that environment and I’d like them to keep jobs.”
McGowan also describes their personal feelings immediately following the Sony acquisition, and explains how, in their view, Bungie would have to change its approach to Destiny 2 and general operations. In McGowan’s view, the new Destiny 2 roadmap represents “things you do to run a franchise, not to keep making the game you and your friends have mastered, or to chase trends.
“This is the future I thought the company should embrace after the Sony acquisition,” McGowan continues, “a studio, not an ‘independent company.’ But there were a lot of egos for whom it was important to pretend that ‘nothing would change.’ I remember sitting there during the deal saying ‘do you think Sony describes this as them getting to pay $3.6 billion for the right to have no input into what Bungie does?’ That was exactly what a lot of people thought. I guess they’ve been given cause to understand that that’s not how things work.”
McGowan left Bungie in November 2023. In a follow-up post, they address the claims leveled by Faylona regarding unpaid compensation – citing an article from The Game Post, which connects to a story about Faylona, the attorney says they were going to “fix” the issue of undelivered payment.
“What’s funny to me is that the next article below this one is a thing I had meant to take care of,” McGowan says, “dealing with a situation where a fan artist had their work built into a trailer. But I guess when you let go of the guy who fixes your problems, those problems don’t get fixed.”
PCGamesN has contacted Bungie regarding McGowan’s comments and will update this story with any further information.
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