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    Destiny 2

    Game » consists of 4 releases. Released Sep 06, 2017

    The full-fledged follow-up to Bungie's sci-fi "looter shooter", streamlining much of the previous game's mechanics while featuring larger worlds and new abilities. It was later made free-to-play.

    Bungie Assumes Full Publishing Rights for Destiny Franchise

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    Hestilllives19

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    #1  Edited By Hestilllives19

    Yesterday morning Jason Schreier put out an extremely cryptic tweet (response 1, 2, and 3) that kind of set the Destiny fanbase into a frenzy.

    "There have been tensions between Bungie and Activision since before Destiny 1 even shipped. With Bungie (wisely) wanting to prioritize hardcore players and Activision unhappy with sales, I continue to wonder about that relationship, and the future of Destiny..."

    When pressed he responded with a few things.

    "I don't want to share anything until I know it for certain, but I'm keeping an eye out today...", "Sorry. But if what I'm hearing is true, I'll find out *very* soon. Bungie's having a team meeting shortly.", and "Here's what I know for certain: Bungie has a team meeting in a few minutes. The buzz around the studio is that it's "good news" for them. I've heard rumors about what it might be, but I don't have enough details to want to share just yet. More coming shortly."

    30 minutes later, at 1:05 PST Bungie themselves tweeted this with a link to a full explanation. https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/47569

    "Today, we're announcing plans for Bungie to assume full publishing rights for the Destiny franchise."

    In "Our Destiny", Bungie goes on to explain that back in 2010 they needed the help of a big Publisher like Activision to get Destiny off the ground, and together over the past 8 years "we created something special". They thanked Activision for that partnership but announced that Activision is transferring the Publishing Rights of the Destiny Franchise to Bungie so that Activision can focus on "owned IP projects". One of the more interesting notes is Bungies line saying "we look forward to... surprising our community with some exciting announcements about what lies beyond." Another interesting line is "We know self-publishing won’t be easy..." and it's indication is that Bungie will no longer be working with a Publisher at all.

    Less than an hour after this announcement Jason Schreier had an article up, https://kotaku.com/bungie-splits-with-activision-1831651740.

    In it he describes a first hand account of the news breaking at Bungie Studios yesterday afternoon of Champagne being popped and employee's cheering to the news. Jason describes one of the most tumultuous parts of the Activision/Bungie relationship having stemmed from Activision's rather rigorous release schedule that many in the community have often attributed to the sometimes poor quality of seemingly rushed Destiny products. Blizzard was quick to mention in a tweet that Destiny 2 PC will continue to receive full support on the Battle.net launcher. Jason also mentions a few of the more interesting concerns over this whole situation, in that both Vicarious Visions and High Moon Studios have been working as partners on Destiny for the last couple years, and the release of Activision as a Publishing Partner is pretty much a guarantee Bungie is losing the help of those 200+ and 100+ employee's at those studios, which will likely limit Bungie's ability to release content at the current levels going forward. Also, if we remember back to June, Bungie got $100 million from NetEase, a Chinese Publishing company, to release a new, non-Destiny related game, https://kotaku.com/bungie-gets-100-million-for-new-non-destiny-game-1826496634, which further splits the 750+ Bungie employee's into another project.

    It will be extremely interesting what the content pipeline for the Destiny Franchise looks like going forward. I think for many in the Destiny fanbase, this news is extremely exciting, but I think we are also all on pins and needles waiting to hear about these new announcements about what lies beyond, especially now.

    Edit: Going through some of the DTG and Bungie responses (look for anything more speculative in comments, not post updates), and I'll update some of what they have said. Deej posted yesterday on his own Twitter that while change is afoot for Bungie, nothing from the Annual Pass Gameplay Calendar is changing. Cosmo announced that yesterdays scheduled TWAB was being pushed to today but would be coming, so expect more news later today.

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    Hestilllives19

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    I also wanted to include a take from one of the bigger names in the community that have talked about this. I thought Aztecross's take was pretty insightful, if not a bit too generous given Destiny is losing access to 300+ Employee's who worked on the franchise as of yesterday. He makes some solid points about where the next Destiny release goes from here though under the guidance of Christopher Barrett. I think many of us in the community hope that the next iteration of Destiny is a platform base and not another sequel, and the hints were heard and leaks from reputable sources seem to hint towards that direction, I just think a project of that scope (one we already know has been underway for at least since last Summer) will take Bungie many many years, though the heavy rumors at this point were already a Fall 2020 release. I wonder how feasible all of that is if Bungie plans to release a Forsaken style update once again in Fall 2019.

    Another interesting response to all of this was from Phil Spencer yesterday. He tweeted "Looking forward to a very bright future working with one of my favorite independent studios on one of my favorite franchises. Excited to see how they continue to grow and evolve Destiny." Some in the community are speculating that this is an indication of Bungie's plans to end Sony's Platform exclusivity now that Activision is out of the picture, but I kind of doubt that since Bungie will need cash and deals like that are quick and easy ways to obtain it. However, Bungie themselves have mentioned in the past their strong interest in things like Cross Save between Platforms, and with everything going on in the industry and Sony's loosening grip on such things, I think it's very likely we will see features like this going forward in the future, even if it's just Xbox One/PC since Bungie doesn't have to worry about upsetting a Platform holder as badly as Activision did.

    I'll update this is any more interesting not quite factual things come to light today.

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    Jesus_Phish

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    @hestilllives19: https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/kotaku-bungie-and-activision-splitting-up-1860588/

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