Bungie's recently revealed plans to change how Destiny 2 handles content drops has won some endorsement from the studio's former general counsel. While legal expert Don McGowan admits it "pains" him to say it, he muses on LinkedIn that "it appears that Sony’s inflicting some discipline on my former colleagues may have forced them to fix the things that were wrong with their game."
"To be clear: I'm not talking about the layoffs," he says (thanks, The GamePost). "I'm talking about forcing them to get their heads out of their asses and focus on things like: implementing a method of new player acquisition; not just doing fan service for the fans in the Bungie C-suite; and running the game like a business. Good. I still have friends in that environment and I'd like them to keep jobs."
McGowan continues by saying operating like a studio and not an independent company is how he thinks Bungie should embrace life after Sony's acquisition. Alas, "there were a lot of egos for whom it was important to pretend that 'nothing would change,'" and the rest is history.
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"I remember sitting there during the deal saying 'do you think Sony describes this as them getting to pay $3.6 billion for the right to have no input into what Bungie does?'" he continues. "That was exactly what a lot of people thought. I guess they've been given cause to understand that that’s not how things work. Good."
Last week, Bungie announced that The Final Shape would essentially end the MMO's content model of annual expansions and 'Episodes.' Now, the MMO will get two "medium-sized" expansions and four free updates a year. All of this will kick off good and proper next year, at which point we'll get a better of idea of what this all looks like. Though, as for the why, Bungie admits Destiny 2 has "become too rigid" – expansions are starting to feel "too formulaic" and offer "little replay value."
"We've loved creating annual Expansions and are especially proud of The Final Shape," game director Tyson Green said. "But the truth is that they dominate almost all our development effort. We need to free ourselves up to explore and innovate with how we deliver Destiny 2 content so we can invest in areas of the game that will feel more impactful to players."
When Destiny 2 "weekly active users dropped lower and faster than we'd seen since 2018," Bungie assembled an A-Team to put out some fires: "We needed to do something"
"A fun example of a bug becoming a feature": Destiny 2 accidentally made Exotic Glaives free to all classes, and Bungie says "we're going to let this ride"
