"We aren’t just listening to feedback, we understand your disappointment"

Not long after announcing changes to how they'll handle majorly updating Marathon going forwards, Bungie have reversed course on their decision to stop developing Destiny 2 - a move they followed with layoffs. Promising to bring back vaulted bits of Destiny 2 and declaring that the series is "foundational" to their future. A future which they've kicked off with a lot of grovelling for forgiveness.

"Bungie has been creating games for over 30 years and we have welcomed the communities that have formed around them," freshly minted studio head Poria Torkan and Marathon general manager Josh Deane wrote in a blog post outlining how Bungie plan to move forwards. "Over the last few years, we lost sight of that, and there have been real consequences. We lost trust, we lost incredible colleagues, and we lost sight of what we should be prioritizing most, our players. As a new leadership team, we must own that. We aren’t just listening to feedback, we understand your disappointment."

So, in response to being shouted at by Destiny players about stopping the Destiny, Bungie have opted to reverse course a bit and declare that they "are not done with Destiny". "Destiny is foundational to Bungie’s future," the pair of devs wrote. "We have more stories to tell, new worlds to build, but we have to do it right and give our teams the time they need to do justice to this amazing universe."

In order to buy that time, a bunch of Destiny 2 campaigns, destinations, and raids previously swept away to make room for subsequent updates will be added back into the game. Bungie made clear this is no simple job, but also acknowledged they "cannot change the decision [they] made" regarding Destiny 2, which seems to be as close as they'll get to acknowledging that this move to reintegrate established bits of the game rather than resuming making new additions is, one would assume, possibly a compromise as a result of having made those layoffs.

Meanwhile, Torkan and Deane spoke about Marathon in much the same tones parent company Sony used when talking about Destiny 2 over the past few years. The shooter "did not reach as many players as [Bungie] had hoped" and "needs to evolve", hence the ditching of its seasonal updates with the aim of sparking a resurgence from December's PvE update onwards.

"This is an important time for Bungie," Torkan and Deane concluded. "Our future depends on making clear choices about where we focus, delivering what we say we will, and being honest about our successes and failures. Stability doesn’t mean shrinking our ambition. It just means that we have to focus on the things you want to see from us, and making sure our vision matches our reality." They added that Bungie have "made several changes with how [they] operate by simplifying [their] priorities, reducing competing initiatives, moving decisions closer to the teams building [their] games, and changing how [they] measure success to place greater emphasis on player satisfaction".

I'm admittedly not a Destiny head, but I think Bungie'll have a job on keeping anyone they get back on board in it for the long haul once the initial waves of nostalgia from bringing back beloved bits of Destiny 2 start to peter out. The hope seems to be that either Marathon will be a juggernaut by then, or the studio'll have a substantial new game to begin dangling. For now though, there looks to be no sign of a Destiny 3 lurking right around the corner.