Bungie and activision divorce

[meiam]

Big news today, Bungie is splitting up with activision (or in boring speak, brought its own publishing rights). This came a bit as a surprised, although with hindsight it's obvious that activision wasn't super happy with bungie and destiny 2 sales (it'll remain on batte net for those wondering).

The first knee jerk reaction is to cheer for bungie against evil super corporation activision (especially after the diablo immortal debacle), but apparently one of the big point of contention was that activision wanted Bungie to make a new expansion for destiny 2 once a year and Bungie wasn't super happy about that, but an expansion a year for a game that already exist doesn't seem all that unreasonable (no need to make a new engine/mechanic and such) and the game need constant injection of new content to stay alive. So I'm not sure this is really that big of an improvement for fan of bungie/destiny.

Also this is the second break up that bungie was involved in, it just sound like bungie doesn't work well with others. When you consider that Bungie only real success was Halo and that a large reason why it became such a classic was it's exclusivity to xbox (everyone who bough one bough Halo cause what else where they going to buy), it doesn't paint such a good picture of Bungie.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Activision wasn't the evil publisher ruining Destiny and Bungie like EA does with devs, it was all Bungie being incompetent developers using their own tech that was complete shit. It was Bungie's idea to bring in microtransactions because they couldn't put out new content in a timely manner. Bungie is not really Bungie anymore and they probably aren't going to be putting out anything better on their own than they could with Activision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZXABh6M8BA

 

[Meximagician]

While Halo was Bungie's only blockbuster, it's hardly their only success. While a bit too slow and thin on gameplay for my taste, the Marathon trilogy has its fan base. And the Myth games seem well enough received (I don't play enough RTS to know).

Hell, the biggest sin Oni ever committed was being released too soon. (Clarification: half baked, not ahead of it's time.)

It's obviously too early to tell, but based on their track record I'd guess Bungie would make for a reliable AA game developer/publisher. Not sure that will play out in a world where most publishers want AAA games, nor do I know if Bungie has enough money squirreled away to even be a publisher.

 

[Saelune]

Bungie should just send its few competent people back to 343, and then close down.

 

[Hawki]

What I want to know is how this'll affect Destiny 2 on the b.net launcher.

Also:

When you consider that Bungie only real success was Halo

Um...

While Halo was Bungie's only blockbuster, it's hardly their only success. While a bit too slow and thin on gameplay for my taste, the Marathon trilogy has its fan base. And the Myth games seem well enough received (I don't play enough RTS to know).

Yeah.

Both Myth and Marathon have their fanbases. Halo was their breakout hit, but it's hardly fair to call Marathon or Myth failures. Granted, I've only played Marathon and some of Marathon 2, so I can't comment too much.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

What I want to know is how this'll affect Destiny 2 on the b.net launcher.

Blizzard tweeted that the launcher will still support Destiny 2 and future updates for it.

OT: This is very interesting, Activision was unhappy with how much money the game was raking in even though Bungie themselves considered the game and its Forsaken expansion a success. Exciting times, I feel like they got one final chance to prove themselves now.

 

[ebalosus]

Too bad that like Bioware, they wanted to be bigger and signed a deal with the devil, and in the process lost all the people who made the company what it was. Both could separate from their publishers, which Bungie has already done, but the damage is already done. They will never be what they used to be.

 

[Worgen]

This is really interesting. I mean how often do devs manage to escape from their dumb decision to join one of the big publishers? I'm really curious to see how bungie handles this and what they do and if they can still make good games.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Oh, but it seemed like such a mediocre marriage between two borderline relevant companies

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

So Bungie finally saved enough money to buy a pair of big boy trousers. I hope they fit or they?re going to look fucking stupid.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

This is really interesting. I mean how often do devs manage to escape from their dumb decision to join one of the big publishers? I'm really curious to see how bungie handles this and what they do and if they can still make good games.

I believe where Bobby Kotick hid the bodies. Can Blizzard split from them now, too?

 

[sXeth]

Oh hey, my login finally unbroke after a month. Hows it going guuys

Anyhow, whether this is good or bad news for Destiny is kind of a tossup. There's always been a back and forth of speculation about whether or what level of interference Activision had, and whether that was any of the detrimental parts of the game.

At the least, the coming months are prettymuch the put up or shut up for Bungie.

 

[Dalisclock]

I didn't realize you could split off from one of the big publishers once you agreed to join with them. I assumed once you took the deal with the devil, so to speak, it was only a matter of time before you got absorbed by the parent company and your studio became another brand name. Or you got shut down for not making 300% profit on every title, because making some money is unacceptable when you could be making ALL THE MONEY!

Or maybe that's just how EA does it.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

So does this mean Destiny 2 will be pulled out of Battle.net and back on Steam?

 

[Lufia Erim]

I didn't realize you could split off from one of the big publishers once you agreed to join with them. I assumed once you took the deal with the devil, so to speak, it was only a matter of time before you got absorbed by the parent company and your studio became another brand name. Or you got shut down for not making 300% profit on every title, because making some money is unacceptable when you could be making ALL THE MONEY!

Or maybe that's just how EA does it.

You can't they had a 10 year 500 million dollar contract with activision.

So 3 possible Scenerios.

a) The contract was over . This is not the case since they are on year 8.

b) Bungie Stormed into the bosses office and quit. This is unlikely because breach of contract usually cost millions of dollars.

c) Activision summoned bungie and told them they are unhappy with Destiny ,are willing to figuratively Rip the contract and Separate. Seeing as Bungie kept the D2 liscence, i would venture to guess it was part of the deal. And since Activision had no more use for Destiny, they gave it away. This is the most likely Scenario.

Now that means That D3 is pretty much cancelled or at least delayed. Because if we look at d1 and d2 as reference D3 should come out in September 2020. meaning it should already be in development.

But Gamers don't think critically. they just kneejerk

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

[small]TEAM-MERGE WITH THE WARFRAME DEVS, YOU FOOLS! WE REALLY WANT YOUR SKYBOX ARTISTS![/small]

Or...you could continue with Destiny, I guess. If you want. Buuuuut listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness like a heartache drives you mad, in the stillness of remembering what you had, what you lost, what you haaaaad...what you loooooost. Oooooh yeah.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

And now this dropped today:

https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/shareholder-alert-pomerantz-law-firm-investigates-claims-on-behalf-of-investors-of-activision-blizzard-inc---atvi-2019-01-11

Um...SHIT

 

[Dalisclock]

And now this dropped today:

https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/shareholder-alert-pomerantz-law-firm-investigates-claims-on-behalf-of-investors-of-activision-blizzard-inc---atvi-2019-01-11

Um...SHIT

Could someone translate this for me? I feel like I kinda understand it but like I'm missing something that should be obvious. What fraud is being alleged here? I don't normally follow the market side of these things and it looks like this might have something to do with the Activision/Bungie Split but I'm not sure how.

 

[sXeth]

And now this dropped today:

https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/shareholder-alert-pomerantz-law-firm-investigates-claims-on-behalf-of-investors-of-activision-blizzard-inc---atvi-2019-01-11

Um...SHIT

Could someone translate this for me? I feel like I kinda understand it but like I'm missing something that should be obvious. What fraud is being alleged here? I don't normally follow the market side of these things and it looks like this might have something to do with the Activision/Bungie Split but I'm not sure how.

I would guess the allegation is that they didn't provide enough notice to shareholders that they were dropping this major franchise in its entirety.

Like with big shareholder overseen corporations, they have to disclose negotiations and offers within those fairly consistently and on established timelines. The CEO of Activision and the CEO of Bungie can't just have a lunch meeting kind of at random and go "Well things aren't working out, here's your space shooter IP and lets go our separate ways", which then causes shareholders to lose a bunch of (potential) money when they announce it that afternoon and the shares drop.

 

[kilenem]

Too bad that like Bioware, they wanted to be bigger and signed a deal with the devil, and in the process lost all the people who made the company what it was. Both could separate from their publishers, which Bungie has already done, but the damage is already done. They will never be what they used to be.

Microsoft isn't that better, the DRM X-BONE wasn't something Bungie needed to stay for.