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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