If you’ve ever had a job where your boss, or bosses, weren’t the best in the world, you can understand the feeling you get when you leave that job and have either a much better boss or you are your own boss. Well despite what you may think, this happens a lot in the video game world. Companies and people leave publishers or developers all the time in order to get more freedom. And that’s exactly what Bungie did recently when they took sole control of the Destiny IP away from Activision.
This split was sudden and emphatic, and many, MANY were happy with this idea. Mainly because in recent years, it’s become very evident that Activision was more focused on getting profits than making better games. Destiny 2 was a great example of this, as the game to many felt like a shell of the original, but mixed with more microtransactions and pay-to-use content. Which caused many controversies.
At times, it felt as though fans were “raging against the machine” trying to get change, and Bungie was apparently going through that too, as they apparently weren’t happy with what Activision was doing with their game. So, they made the split…and then they partied like it was 1999.
Kotaku noted in a report, “Bungie told employees during a team meeting this afternoon, framing it as fantastic news for a studio that has long grown sick of dealing with its publisher. Employees cheered and popped champagne, according to one person who was there.”
This goes to prove that Bungie too was unhappy about what was going on with the publisher, and that they listened to fans in regards to how to make Destiny better.
But, it should be said, it’s easy to say “let’s go out on our own”, but harder to make it stick. If they want to continue to be successful, they better make sure they do their next project/title right.
