Bungie kept its decision to end Destiny 2 support under wraps from nearly the entire studio, according to reporting by Forbes. The vast majority of developers learned about the discontinuation only when the company made the announcement public last week, catching colleagues off guard despite their active involvement in the franchise.
The shutdown decision was made earlier this year, but knowledge remained confined to a small circle. Only teams already working on the final content update scheduled for June 9 and those who had shifted to Marathon, Bungie's new extraction shooter, were brought into the loop beforehand. When word did reach other staff members who had been informed, those individuals reportedly urged leadership to communicate the plan more widely across the company.
The surprise rippled through a studio that had recently launched Marathon just months earlier. Some developers had continued working on canceled content updates like The Shattered Cycle, unaware their efforts would never ship. The secrecy extended through at least one staff town hall after the public announcement, where employees pressed leadership about layoffs but received inadequate answers.
Bloomberg's reporting on the fallout indicated Bungie was planning significant layoffs and had no immediate timeline for developing Destiny 3. The decision arrives as Sony, which acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion in 2022, took a $765 million impairment loss this fiscal year tied to the studio's underperformance.
Bungie's focus has now shifted entirely to Marathon. The studio confirmed plans to launch a PvE mode alongside other major updates in the coming months. The extraction shooter had reached approximately 1.2 million copies sold by late March, according to Alinea Analytics estimates.
The silence around the Destiny 2 decision has fueled fan backlash. A petition demanding Sony greenlight Destiny 3 surpassed 200,000 signatures within days of the announcement, reflecting the community's frustration with the franchise's abrupt ending.
Author Emily Chen: "Keeping hundreds of developers in the dark about their project's fate until the press release went live is a management failure that will haunt Bungie's reputation far longer than any failed live service."
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