🤢 OPINION: Don't Be Like Bungie

Gay Frog Blast the Vent Core!

Bungie Studios (or simply Bungie) WAS one of the most respected video game studios in the industry, responsible for creating the iconic Halo franchise. But now, Bungie has fallen from grace and has become a corporate bloat.

After 2007, Bungie became independent from Microsoft but continued making two more Halo games until 2010, with the Halo intellectual property belonging to Microsoft. Since then, they invested in a new hyped project called Destiny, released in 2014, it's an online-only story-driven first-person shooter game with multiplayer. To be honest, I did enjoy the story and its atmosphere (with that Bungie flavor) but was disappointed that you had to connect to the internet all the time. My favorite character was Cayde-6, voiced by Nathan  Fillion. Then, they released Destiny 2 which is basically an "improved"  version of the first game rather than a true squeal.

For the past ten years, Bungie had over 1200 employees working on this "one game" and never made other games. Why? Because it's an endless money maker. It's not a typical game but a "game as a service."

First, they made and sold the Destiny "base" game for $60, then they added microtransactions (ranging from $4.99 to $19.99), and finally added four expansion packs, costing $19.99 each.
But wait, there's more!

Then, a few years later, they made a recycled sequel, Destiny 2, basically the same game for $60 with microtransactions ranging from $4.99 to  $19.99, and added four expansion packs, costing $19.99. Additionally,  they've added free episodic seasons and events.

Not only that, but Bungie has made and sold many expensive merchandise of both games ranging from $20 T-shirts, $125 necklaces, and a $200 Cayde-6 Bust!  They also sell music albums (for each base game and each expansion), plushes, coloring books, and even a fucking cookbook!

We must consoom!!!

But wait, there's more in the closet!

Obviously, Bungie has received millions of ESG/DEI money from Blackrock (and others). While literary and technically, there's no proof because Bungie was a private company. It's oblivious because they've added woke content to Destiny 2's storyline (e.g., Echoes) and its constant virtue signaling on their website, Twitter feed, and the game itself. "Blacked at Bungie," "Trans at Bungie," "Stop Asian hate at  Bungie," "LatinX at Bungie," "Abortions at Bungie" (Yes, this one is real as well), "Pride at Bungie," etc.

Their version of DEI is called IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity Association) and it's a very bad IDEA!

They hired heavy bloat of DIE employees (33% are women, 38% are minorities), prioritizing race, gender, and identity over technical merit with no ideas, no direction, and no clue what to do in the leadership of 140 million dollar game (over $500 million total for the franchise). The more woke you are, the more ESG/DEI money you get.

In 2022, Bungie received more money from the Sony acquisition for $3.6 billion, and after that, the Bungie CEO spent $2.3 million on classic cars. (On October 30, 2023, Bungie laid off approximately 100 of 1200  employees, part of a cost-cutting measure across all Sony studios because most of Sony's games were trash.)

You get what I'm pointing at? It wouldn't even surprise me if they were selling player's analytics data to third parties.

Bungie was started by a couple of college dudes who loved games, then over 30 years later, became a corporate bloat that only wants easy money. Do you think the CEO and the shareholders of Bungie care about gamers, their employees, the minorities they virtue signal to, and the woke cultists they are catering to? No, they don't.

Their lame woke activism injected into Destiny 2 and their website, and their greedy financial decisions have pissed off alot of their fan base. As a consequence, revenue fell from Destiny 2 and their final expansion, The Final Shape, with low sales expectations. On July 2024, Bungie announced the layoffs of 220 staff in July 2024, leaving about 850 employees remaining. 220 people are 17%...why does Bungie need OVER 1000 PEOPLE to work on ONE GAME?! I guess they gotta have their chief diversity officer, sensitivity readers, and plenty of community liaisons to shit on your customers. Many of those diversity hires probably don't even do any real productive work a la Twitter. Bungie's employees and development team are bloated; just compare it to the original Halo 2 team who had over 70 people working on the classic masterpiece. Not only do they do diversity hires for that sweet juicy ESG/DIE money, but here are theories that the reason why they have so many employees is because of tax breaks.

Typical Destiny players

Besides the woke and greedy stuff, their whole “ten year plan” for one game was so dumb; just take a look at Destiny 2. Many players have said that Bungie went from a phenomenal high bar that was the Witch Queen expansion and that high carried over to Lightfall, which was a disaster with a terrible story and no characters to be attached to, and you don’t even KNOW what you’re even after (The Veil) until SIX MONTHS after the expansion (which was supposed to be Destiny's version of Infinity War)  dropped! (To put it in MCU terms, imagine going from watching Winter Soldier or  Civil War to Captain Marvel following up immediately afterward.) Not to mention, some of the developers at the time spurred on a disillusioned fanbase, and many of them didn’t come back for The Final Shape after that.

You know, I kind of feel sorry for the players who spent ALOT of money on Destiny 1 and 2, sweating with fear that the money and time spent will be wasted. 

The original development team at Bungie was gamers making games for gamers. They made their games with pride and passion to absolute high quality, from the story to the highest attention to detail with its graphics. Now, it's run by people who don't care about games and gamers and want to please the shareholders.

Bungie went from this to this!

This is also why AAA gaming as a whole is falling, it's just not Bungie, but it's all of the AAA studios. There have been low sales of their titles, because of many corporate executive/shareholders influences, over-hiring, price hikes, lower quality games, virtue signaling, and resulting mass lay-offs. And these events may lead to another video game crash!

On May 24, 2023, Bungie announced a new game, Marathon, a reboot of their classic shooters for the Macintosh (precursor to Halo). Just like Destiny, it will be a generic online-only multiplayer shooter game with microtransactions and expansion packs with the Marathon name and lore slapped into it to generate hype and pillage their only remaining IP one last time before potential bankruptcy. You shouldn't fall for it.

The time when big corporate interests entered the gaming industry and it became more significant than cinema, marked the end of gaming. The original developers who were passionate about creating and playing video games have left, and they have been replaced by profit-driven shareholders and political activists who lack understanding of the medium. There is a need to overhaul the game industry.

So, if you own a video game company (or any company in general), please avoid being as greedy and shortsighted as Bungie.

See you at starside!

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