Layoffs started (Destiny)

by Avateur , Friday, June 26, 2026, 23:11 (11 hours, 34 minutes ago) @ Schooly D

I've found the (myriad) post-mortems floating around X/Reddit/here interesting and, as someone who's been mostly checked out since D1, educational.

I have thoughts and speculations but first I'd like to know: how do (and did) people receive Destiny 1? I remember even then that people had the same sort of "this sucks but I'm playing anyway" impulsion that I'd say has characterized the Destiny 2 fan communities. And yet D1 must have been commercially successful in a way D2 wasn't.

Speaking just for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed D1, but I hated that it didn't have a story. And neither did D2 (at least up to the point where I quit playing it). As far as my memory goes, I could have sworn Destiny was supposed to have a story, but they forced out Joseph Staten or something along those lines and scrapped a ton of what the game was supposed to do.

At the same time, even though it wasn't perfect, multiplayer was a lot of fun. I never really tired of Crucible, and I enjoyed doing things with whoever I was playing with. The raids were the best part of the game, especially having done all of them blind to start with others who also went in blind. Oh, and Trials of Osiris was an awesome time. I'm pretty sure D1 was a huge success and was printing money for a while there.

D2 felt soulless and like it was just going through the motions. A lot of the clever Crucible map design and fun seemed to be missing from the sterile maps in D2. The lack of story to the game also didn't help. I ducked out when it became apparent that they weren't going to really improve on the in-game economy, grinding, and total disrespect for players' time. HOWEVER, I was under the impression that D2 also printed money for years and years before eventually running into issues later on. I have no sources for this that I can readily point to for what I just said about D1 and D2, just strictly going off of what I'm remembering from back then.

If the fault for the layoffs the last few years is with "management", what changed? And for the people who believe the "soul" of Bungie escaped long ago and what remains is a corporate husk, was that soul present in D1?

I don't know if changed is the right word, but Pete Parsons was a disaster. Too much for me to want to go into here. But I believe the soul was present in D1, particularly with how Joseph Staten's vision (among many others who had been around for the decade+ prior) helped to shape and craft a lot of it (though a lot of that seemingly being thrown out), and Luke Smith at least managing the raids and that whole process. And story or no story, the lore and Grimoire were absolutely top notch imo.

Which leads me to Marathon (which I'll post about separately). In classic Bungie fashion, the game was in development and apparently had to get scrapped or almost entirely reworked into something else. And although it may have bombed with the public at large and does have its problems, I think the game is great and filled with a lot of soul and character. But after all of these layoffs, including to some of the Marathon team, who knows what even that future holds.