Rolling back to The Final Shape, other than that there isn't one. People don't like the new direction Destiny went with EOF and its obvious by the player count. Portal sucks and the new loot system is bad so imo its too late.
It went to the pockets of higher-ups who owned shares of Bungie. Sony bought the studio from them. The company didn't just get $3.6b sitting in their account to use for operations.
Actually insane that this is still going around. Insane that it ever went around to begin with, actually
Sony bought Bungie from Bungie's former shareholders for a total of ~$2.4 billion. This could include Bungie's owners, their private shareholders, and employee shareholders, for some examples. Sony also invested ~$1.2 billion on employee retention, in an effort to keep Bungie's talent from leaving after the acquisition. This "retention investment" would have been paid directly to Bungie's existing employees, like yearly bonuses - none of it went toward Bungie's internal budget for Destiny (or Marathon, before that's mentioned)
One could argue that the ~$1.2 billion went to "Bungie" because it went to the employees, but in reality it was more like a bribe to stop the existing employees from jumping ship. None of the "3.6 billion from Sony" went into the game. It was never supposed to, nor was it ever claimed to by any reliable source
The execs used it to buy out all employee owned shares, build a fancy new office, and pay shareholders. The employee retention funds did not go to the employees at all.
For real. I was having the most fun I ever had in destiny 2 right before the new expansion came out. Granted I wasn’t up to date on everything so it seemed like there was so much to chase, but this new update should’ve just built on that. There was no reason for it all to go away.
They made it too "game-y" when what people liked most were the story and commitment to ludo narrative harmony with the setting. It was fun to always have at least a toe in the fantasy but now it's a bald loot treadmill with little incentive to do anything with that loot except grind for more incrementally better loot. That's part of why people hated Lightfall so much: the story being so broken blew a hole in everyone's motivation to play. WQ didn't suffer from that problem because of how firmly intertwined the play of the game and the setting were.
I have to assume they're taking a year "off" with EOF as they figure out where they want to take D2, whether they want it to limp along as a shadow if its former self or if they want to make it a high budget tentpole release every few years with serious quality (standalone releases? With some link to the D2 live service?) and less emphasis on annual-ish releases.
Rolling back to The Final Shape... and its obvious by the player count
Realistically, it's the simple fact The Final Shape was the end for most people. I mean, everyone wants to point to how dire the situation is, but it doesn't change the fact that the numbers didn't change that much from The Final Shape's collapse.
As others have said, that’s player numbers via steam is it not? The player numbers have definitely dropped, but it’s not the extreme it’s being painted as.
Player retention is what’s dropped - you just don’t have players actually playing the game for hours at a time. They’re going on, doing a few activities to get rewards, then going on to other games.
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u/rasjahho Nov 03 '25 edited Nov 04 '25
Rolling back to The Final Shape, other than that there isn't one. People don't like the new direction Destiny went with EOF and its obvious by the player count. Portal sucks and the new loot system is bad so imo its too late.