The value of the "We messed up" tour (Destiny)

by squidnh3, Monday, September 28, 2026, 11:36 (3 hours, 3 minutes ago) @ Cody Miller

The problem was that they spent too much money. If they made Marathon for 10 million, it would have been absolutely fine.

But that's not really what they are saying in this video. What I took away from the video I would paraphrase as:

We thought people would respond to this hardcore loop
Not that many people did (i.e., we messed up)
Now we need to expand the game to include PvE, PvP, and easier modes for people that want to relax

What they are not saying in the video is, "we made a game specifically aimed at a small group of people but accidentally spent an order of magnitude more money than we should have."

If my interpretation is true, they are not explaining the part about why they thought a large group of people would respond to their hardcore extraction shooter when that had never happened before. To me, that lessens the value of the apology tour video.

If your interpretation is true (whoops, we made a hardcore game but spent too much money), they are straight up lying in this video about what happened, which definitely contradicts the message of the video.

What I believe actually happened is that they absolutely thought Marathon would be a breakout hit and purposefully poured the amount of money into it that they did. The reason they thought it would be a breakout hit - hubris and group think. They are Bungie, and even though I, a Bungie employee, am skeptical about the prospects of this game, everyone else seems positive, so I will stay positive too.