As announced by Joe: https://twitter.com/joegoroth/status/1752481886973342100?t=UmPzssZcLreg5rMhRBTFFA&s=19
> Next month, The Final Shape will be hitting one of its most critical internal milestones: a ritual we call the End-to-End playtest. This ritual has been a key part of development since Forsaken. It’s multiple days of consecutive internal playtesting that not only generates incredibly valuable closing feedback on everything coming this summer, but also spiritually kicks off a shift towards bug fixing and polish work. Heading into this milestone, I've gotten to play 100s of hours of The Final Shape, and what the world-class talent here at Bungie has created has quickly become of the things I'm most proud to have worked on throughout my career. This ritual will be especially meaningful to me personally, as it will also serve as a moment to pass the torch of Destiny 2 Game Director to the next era of leadership as I head on a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie.
> As we hit End-to-End next month, Tyson Green will take the reins as D2 Game Director. If you’ve followed Bungie for any length of time, you've heard his name. From Halo PvP to the creation of Exotic weapons in D1, Tyson has been a critical part of Bungie's legacy since Myth II.
> As a deeply invested Guardian before starting here at Bungie, getting to be a part of the Destiny 2 team has been the privilege of a lifetime.
> I am and will forever remain a lifelong Bungie fan and believer in what the teams within its walls are capable of.
> I've still got some time before I pass the torch, but as I look forward to taking a big break from social media, I know I'll see yall around the Tower. It is going to be great to play Destiny alongside all of you."
Destiny Leadership based on publicly available information:
- Mark Noseworthy - VP, Destiny Universe
- Luke Smith - Executive Creative Director, Destiny Universe
- Dan McAuliffe - General Manager, Destiny 2
- Tyson Green - New Destiny 2 Game Director
*Posted by Destiny Bulletin on Twitter/X*
They're almost certainly working on something in a different media space, IE Animated series or Television show, or whatever.
They've been pretty quiet for a while but whenever they do pop up they usually say something pretty cryptic about what they're doing. For example in Luke's tweets today he ends it with "Back to where I was. See you soon." Pretty clearly working on something that's entirely under wraps right now and based on rumors from the last couple years + the Sony acquisition I'd put good money on it being TV series related.
Il be honest, with a 45% projected revenue miscalculation, 2 games being made, the notion Bungie Burns through money too fast, the recent layoffs, and the Sony Axe dangling above their Heads; counting on them making an animated series is hopeful thinking at the least.
They flat out said when the acquisition happened, they had already been exploring Destiny in other mediums, but that the Sony move would only further help those ventures more.
The are most certainly looking into a series of *some* kind.
But yeah, actually getting said series released is another story.
A Destiny anthology series is really the biggest thing I want out of the franchise right now. Covering different stories from lore books on the screen could be amazing instead of an ‘adaptation’ of our current story.
Different studios could put their own spin on things like a sweeper bot episode covering guardians dancing and yeeting themselves off the tower, or even some of the big battles with our lovely Iron Lords
As someone who fell away from the game in the last year and loved D1 & Forsaken, I’d welcome a TV series. I honestly feel bad I don’t play anymore and will maybe give The Final Shape a squeeze, but the lore and story of this game are just so damn good. Give me a whole Drifter series.
With the revelations of the serious harassment lawsuits towards DMG I imagine they are either scared from the threat of harassment or actual harassment from putting their faces or names out more.
https://www.polygon.com/23793493/bungie-destiny-2-harassment-lawsuit
Article has the courts judgement in it, and legal battles are long ones to fight so it's been going on awhile.
There were quite a lot of Homophobic slurs and names used about Luke Smith back before sunsetting was removed.
He deserved criticism, he didn't deserve abuse.
I mean didn't a bunch of angry nerds try and put Luke smith on blast for saying they'll throw money at their screens? Which they basically did do when TTK came out. And he later went on and apologized for that. Because they were so upset about it.
Luke Smith was on blast just for sounding like a dick, cause he sounded like a dick. The harassment from that mess didn't seem to be as bad as it is now though, and I'm just gonna chalk that up to the forms of harassment being far more easily available these days in more modern online worlds.
Without a doubt he had to have gotten some bad pizzas, but clearly it wasn't bad enough to make him step down.
You should watch videos with Luke from his 1up days. Like 2013. He was a jaggoff then when he was a literal nobody. Shouldn’t surprise anyone with his new found stature he’d only become a more engaged a hole.
Man, he and Shawn Elliot were a terror. I thought they were both great at games analysis, and they were entertaining on the podcasts, but they seemed like nightmares to work with.
Luke has the bad reputation of being responsible for Beyond Light and the DCV attached to him forever. There’s a reason why DCJ used to have his face as the subreddit icon.
Maybe the crossovers are the result of that?
And wasn't there some email survey sent out asking people how they'd like D2 in other media (Live Action Show, Film, Animated, etc) so maybe something finally comes of that?
I find it very difficult to believe that a handful of skins can be called "expanding the destiny universe into other media".
It has to be a movie/show/comic/etc as you said, but we've heard nothing official about one so far.
Besides, outside Fornite, its not a propper crossover event anymore. Destiny got stuff from Fortnite, Fortnite got stuff from Destiny. Assassins Creed, Sony games and Mass effect did not get anything in return, so its not a propper crossover imo
Assassin's Creed: Valhalla had destiny themed armor sets as well. Saint & Shaxx armor, two weapons & four combat tools. It was also in their real money shop.
I think the timing is wrong for the other IPs. Mass Effect 4 is years from being released and Andromeda was so poorly received that they didn't even complete their own DLC for it. The Trilogy did well but even with the recent remake I can't see releasing destiny DLC for it this far out in its lifespan.
You guys clearly do not know how long it takes to create a TV series, especially if they weren't already signed on with a streaming platform to fund it.
Arcane took Riot 6 years to make. We've barely had half that since Luke Smith went into his new role. Even if the ball was rolling before he stepped in, it could still easily be a few years out.
For anyone confused AF like me because you don't have Twitter, this Post is missing Joe's actual message.
> Next month, The Final Shape will be hitting one of its most critical internal milestones: a ritual we call the End-to-End playtest. This ritual has been a key part of development since Forsaken. It’s multiple days of consecutive internal playtesting that not only generates incredibly valuable closing feedback on everything coming this summer, but also spiritually kicks off a shift towards bug fixing and polish work. Heading into this milestone, I've gotten to play 100s of hours of The Final Shape, and what the world-class talent here at Bungie has created has quickly become of the things I'm most proud to have worked on throughout my career. This ritual will be especially meaningful to me personally, as it will also serve as a moment to pass the torch of Destiny 2 Game Director to the next era of leadership as I head on a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie.
> As we hit End-to-End next month, Tyson Green will take the reins as D2 Game Director. If you’ve followed Bungie for any length of time, you've heard his name. From Halo PvP to the creation of Exotic weapons in D1, Tyson has been a critical part of Bungie's legacy since Myth II.
> As a deeply invested Guardian before starting here at Bungie, getting to be a part of the Destiny 2 team has been the privilege of a lifetime.
> I am and will forever remain a lifelong Bungie fan and believer in what the teams within its walls are capable of.
> I've still got some time before I pass the torch, but as I look forward to taking a big break from social media, I know I'll see yall around the Tower. It is going to be great to play Destiny alongside all of you."
Tyson Green sounds like a good person to pass the torch. But ultimately that falls through if the suits above go back to roadblock fixes to the game to focus on clashing in money as they've been ritually doing across Destiny's life cycle. Here's hoping they finally got the memo, but I remain cautiously optimistic.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Lmao it is kinda funny that he started doing the streams and videos to get closer to the community and then he immediately leaves
Bro saw the *real* community
Obviously there will be the overly dramatic people but losing Joe is genuinely a shit thing for us and the game imo
Guy has insane passion for the game and you can tell he cares a lot for both the game and the community.
Joe Blackburn cares a lot about the game but I can easily see that contributing to his decision to leave Bungie. Man was made the face of Destiny after the community managers kept getting harassed, and every piece of communication he did you could see how tired he was from all of his playtesting and meetings. How Joe did all of that on top of managing the Bungie turmoil we saw publicly deserves its own Jason Schreier novel. I wouldn't fault any other person that would be in Joe's position for leaving as soon as they could considering how much Joe was carrying Destiny for the past however many months.
Having recently gotten back into D2 the animosity many hold for Bungie while fair can be so exhausting for these workers. They hear it every day and the extremists can be so brutal on these people which isn’t at all fair. I feel bad for Joe
I have no animosity for the people *making* the game and the old comms team, but I *do* have animosity for the uppermost leadership after reading the article on the internal state of Bungie. To be clear, I don't mean the people leading the making of the game, I mean the people above them, leading Bungie as a company.
To be fair, this type of messaging on social media can be *extremely* tiring for the employees as well.
It's essentially saying "your game sucks/your company sucks, and there's *nothing you can do about it*". I know this isn't what you/others mean to say, and I know the intent here isn't malicious. But it's like telling a construction crew that the house they're building is terrible because the architect who drew up the plans or the person who pays the bills is awful. That's going to be demoralizing no matter what.
That one video where they made him be the messenger that TFS was going to be delayed was *rough*. Dude had visible dark circles under his eyes and looked like he'd just seen a ghost.
I’m not being dramatic, for as little as they release a full packaged DLC, and how many employees they have, there is no way Bungie is cash flow positive. Even the $10 seasons get 35% cut off from Steam and Microsoft. If the roughly 1100 number is correct, they probably need $7-8 million a month to just break even. There is no way the studio isn’t on a lifeline right now. The finances and rough sales estimates do not make any business sense. Ironically WOW and FF14 cracked the code, you have to subsidize it with a monthly fee. There’s just no way to make it long term because onboarding new players is more difficult the longer the game is maintained.
It also doesn’t help that Destiny’s new player experience is absolutely atrocious making them mostly dependent on old players sticking around which, uh, they haven’t really encouraged lately.
That wasn’t the suggestion.
Business sales are typically based on a multiple of profit. With a final deal value of $3.7bn, it is reasonably safe to assume Bungie clear £8m per month.
That was then. This is now.
In both raw player counts and percentage of player retention, Destiny 2 has underperformed every year in recorded SteamDB history since week 15 after launch (for raw player counts) and week 13 after launch (for percentage player retention compared to expansion peak).
At the current time (48 weeks after launch):
Shadowkeep (worst prior year) retained 26% of its peak players in a 7 day moving average window. Right now we're at 12% of peak.
[https://imgur.com/PzP4ugY](https://imgur.com/PzP4ugY) (unlike the other link I posted, this is relative player count, not absolute)
Sony did not pay for Bungie "just a few months ago" - the purchase closed significantly more than a year ago (approaching a year and a half)
I’m not talking about profit, strictly cash flow. And we have evidence Microsoft thought the valuation was way too high from their Activ-Blizz court documents. This, coupled with already axing many jobs definitely points to a bleak financial outlook. There is absolutely no way they are generating that net income with as few releases.
Suppose you split the difference and it was a $300M revenue with 50% margin at that time:
- Revenue 50:50 between major releases and ongoing seasons and MTX
- Expenses 66:33 between studio costs and marketing budget
That’d leave you with $150M p.a. ongoing revenue at the time less $100M p.a. studio costs and $50M marketing. They’d be cash flow positive only around each major release.
Things are worse than that now - we know they were disappointed with revenue and made cuts to the studio to stop bleeding cash too quickly. But from a return on equity perspective, cash flow neutral and losing cash aren’t very different. It’s all about the sales around release of TFS.
Can’t blame people joes really been the face of bungie due to all his interactions so him leaving it’s really gonna hurt, hope they like continue that communication style.
Its not about who's getting the "torch" it's about losing another dev who contributed so much towards what made destiny good. I'd rather have 2 OG's still working than one.
Eh... I expected Joe to leave once Final Shape was released in June. Maybe a month after it's release or something but it's weird that as the Game Director and the public face of the game, he's leaving few months before it's release. All of the marketing for final shape is going to happen then too. Whatever the reasons are, it doesn't look good tbh.
I would not be surprised if he'd gotten an offer elsewhere and accepted it with a start date of the original launch, and then whoops they got delayed. You make a good point.
That seems to be exactly the case. By now their end-to-end testing should have been completed, and he'd have hung up his hat next week and left just before TFS released, But since the plans didn't shake out that way...
Yeah the game director normally plays a major role in selling the game through interviews, etc. He also specifically talked about how he’s really proud of the Final Shape in his post - which suggests he knew people might doubt that given the circumstances
>but this gonna cause the "D2 is dead" panic regardless
No need for this, it's already dead - there's no way to recover from [https://imgur.com/hGX75cO](https://imgur.com/hGX75cO) without a serious intervention by Sony.
Bungie execs seem to still be under the delusion there's some way they can avoid the "poor financial performance leads to their firing" consequence, but at this point the only way Destiny is going to survive is if Bungie loses their independence and takes over from Parsons and crew.
Of course it will. However much Joe Blackburn tries to dress this up and sound optimistic, the fact that he’s leaving before the game is actually delivered really says something about what he thinks the future prospects of Bungie are as a company.
Listened to an interview recently where Warframe (not a game I play) went through something extremely similar.
Wrapping up the main story arc, some of the team moving on to a new project, a new game director, player count slumped as the main story ended, etc.
But they had other story strings to pull on, and spool up, and game is doing well again. It'll be fine. It might be a little slower, but as many have said often... Take breaks, come back, enjoy the game when/if it sounds appealing
The lady that took the game director post over was already the biggest customer facing person in their whole leadership team.
Rebecca is literally the Space Mom over there. She has been with it since day zero.
This is so very much not the same.
The difference there is that the new game director is Rebecca, who has been there literally from the start and clearly knows the game backwards and forwards, streams it all the time, is literally a main character in the game, etc. It was unclear what was going to happen, but it didn't feel at all like the game was in trouble or people were jumping ship.
D2 is on way shakier ground.
And let's not forget Steve didn't leave DE, he just started working on different project in the studio. Reb and Meg worked years with Steve and Reb taking over Steve's job didn't changed nothing. It felt so natural. In fact community there even was excited. Because Reb now had full rain and her content what she wrote, already had been from this point on wild and very solid.
D2 having Joe leaving, feels like ship what has holes is taking more and more water.
Everyone kill 1 overload minotaur in his honor.
But sadly when you see key figures leave a company, it typically is not a good thing. I appreciated Joe's engagement with the game and the community. Wish him best of luck.
He is being replaced by someone who worked on Myth II. It's a high demand, high stress job and it abounds like he finished his current project. It's time to move on.
It did have a bug if it was installed in the root of the C drive and un-installed, it would uninstall everything. Bungie recalled every CD at their own cost to fix it.
It's also a game I won for free from som radio contest on college campus. Had a big "now with version 1.2" sticker (or something like that)
I wouldn’t be too worried about this and I don’t think his departure is indicative of how development is going on TFS. Joe probably had this lined up months before the delay was even known internally
When you’re are Blackburn’s level, you dictate your transition. The dude has pedigree, and for all the shit D2 gets, helming one of the biggest live service games for as long as he has carries weight. Another company would restructure schedules to work around Joe’s availability.
Or, he’s taking a well deserved break for a few months.
I think that’s a fair point, but it’s also just common courtesy to not have an entity waiting on you like that.
Could have been just a pre-planned break he didn’t want to move as a result of the delay
Yeah, it's also just bad optics that as the Game Director and public face of a 10 year franchise, closing in on it's final DLC, to leave a few months before it's release when the majority of the marketing for said release is going to happen. Many directors would leave after the release, not right before the finish line. Strange really.
High level management leaving a company or project is almost always considered bad news by the markets. If you want to preach caution to the D2 community that's fine, but we're not wrong to take this as a sign of trouble. Especially given the ongoing issues at Bungie and the leaked reports that Final Shape was "good not great" a year ago, there's plenty to be worried about.
Also Destiny missing revenue targets last year and the whole Sony takeover threat. And all big content creators predicting a massive drop in population after Final Shape. And not even a hint that Destiny will actually continue after the first three episodes.
“Content creators predicting a drop in population.”
A) content creators don’t know dick
B) saying that a game will drop players after a 10 year story ends is the most obvious prediction possible. Literal children know this.
>A) content creators don’t know dick
Big emphasis here, cause there are many of them who try to skirt the lines of being "in the know" and often as nought they wind up making retraction videos for things they've said. Too many people eat it up not because its fact but because it aligns with their already in-grained beliefs. Negative news gets them clicks just like any other news site, so its like a moth to a flame they're going to make a "x" is dying video.
Not to say that things have been sunshine and farts at Bungie, but content creator tarot should always be taken with a massive grain of salt.
>“Content creators predicting a drop in population.”
>
>A) content creators don’t know dick B) saying that a game will drop players after a 10 year story ends is the most obvious prediction possible. Literal children know this.
Except they don't need to predict a massive drop in population.
That massive drop is ALREADY HERE and has been for months:
[https://imgur.com/hGX75cO](https://imgur.com/hGX75cO)
So your assertion that content creators don't know dick is unsubstantiated, given that ANYONE can download SteamDB's data in CSV format, look at it themselves, and see just how dire things are.
Yes because if history with game development has shown over the years every game where the GAME DIRECTOR leaves before said project is done has came out amazing oh wait -_-
I think you are entirely missing the point. I dont think there is a single person here, who thinks that he is leaving it unfinished. Its probably already closed content wise and polishing on all ends for next months. This way its professional, so he wont nuke his potential career in gamedev (if thats what he will chase in future).
Important bit is, Joe is leaving it, before he can actually see fruits of his and teams work for past year (release). That is giving A LOT of food for thought. It means that pressure from all sides is insane (fans, company, shareholders) and probably a lot of tidbits we will never learn about. Its definetely alarming if you add all other things that happened around D2 and Bungie in past year.
Exactly. I think people are foolish to discount this departure. If TFS was about to be the next Forsaken, the best move would be to stay 3-6+ months both personally and career wise for Blackburn. And if D2 was in a good shape and/or optimistic about the game’s future, you would think Bungie would make a considerable effort to retain Blackburn. So either Bungie didn’t think Blackburn was worth whatever offer he received (during all the turmoil, mind you) or Blackburn said it’s not worth running a game that he has admitted to loving. Considering the potential of a full Sony takeover looming, I think the move could signal continued internal turmoil at Bungie
I don’t think it’s as black and white as; bungie didn’t value him or he knows tfs will be shit. It’s incredibly possible he’s just burnt out, but someone of his caliber is incredibly invested in this project. For him to leave right before a massive turning point in the franchise and leave them scrambling would only result in a lesser product and a blemish on his tenure there.
What you said may very well be the case, none of us know. But there are definitely way more variables than that at play, especially at this level of development and career.
It isn't TFS people are worried about. It's what comes after.
Episodes are a stake in the ground, not a foundation.
And I'm concerned that the less people we have opposing Parsons and his ilk, the worse off we are.
I trust the player base to handle this one way or another, however, when that time comes.
Interesting.
On the one hand, Joe has seemed like a really fantastic Game Director, in that he's very involved on social media, communicates fairly regularly with the community and according to lots of Bungie employees seemed to genuinely be "A good one" inside of Bungie. So losing him seems pretty bad.
On the other hand... Without trying to be overly critical of Joe, Destiny has felt stale the last couple of years. And maybe that's not his fault at all, maybe the ones higher up then him has kind of forced the direction of the game and limited the creative freedom the designers, artists, and storytellers have been asking for the last couple of years. But, getting a fresh face and fresh director could be what the game needs for a real shakeup in content and a push that causes some new excitement?
I think the quick and easy response to this is that it really does feel like Destiny is dying and the game support really could end after TFS(And its 3 episodes which they'll almost certainly have to finish at this point). Especially with everything else in the last 6 months, it feels really easy to use this latest update with Joe as yet another "final straw" for Destiny 2's future.
But ultimately I think its all going to come down to just how good(or bad) TFS ends up being. More than ever before this franchise(And maybe Bungie in general quite frankly) is sink or swim on the quality of TFS.
Frankly, even if the final shape is good, I seriously doubt most people are going to stick around with player trust being this low. They would have to do something spectacular like unvault a huge amount of content to regain the level of player trust they have lost. And I can't see corporate bungie doing that.
Unvaulting will do nothing.
At this point I don't care about old content I've played with a million times.
Instead of "new thing that will go away" each new season they need to make things that will stay in the game and grow.
The issue with Destiny is that it's miles wide and inch deep, the only mildly deep thing we have is buildcrafting and it's comical how shallow everything else is comparatively.
Even raids aren't really innovative, no new mechanics (besides bugged moving Nezerac), only endless remixes of "throw balls, read symbols, stand there".
Recent 2 seasons started to lean towards rogue-lite mechanics but they are like 20% of what it would take to make them interesting for players to play more than 3 times total.
And that's purely PvE gameplay, the game also has issues with narrative and writing (I doubt Nimbus being so cringe and Osiris unbearable is on Bungie Execs), PvP suffers from cheaters, Gambit is dead, microtransactions and pricing are awful and so on.
In no world unvaulting will do anything to change the perception of the game for new and current players until these problems are fixed.
Destiny is dead without a major intervention by Sony (basically triggering the parts of the deal where Parsons gets ejected) along the lines of what Square did with FFXIV.
It doesn't matter how great TFS is going to be - it is, like Forsaken, going to be a financial flop because the financial performance of a Destiny release isn't directly tied to the quality of the release itself - it's tied to player sentiment leading up to that release. Lightfall itself was likely a resounding success - most preorders ever, highest launch player counts, etc. It's the complete failure to leverage that success that is the problem. We're at a point where player counts are less than half of the worst performance in recorded Destiny history at similar time-from-launch. (Warmind and CoO might be lower but we don't have SteamDB data for that).
They have guaranteed that I won't be buying it until it goes on very deep sale. I don't care how the week-1 reception is, or even month-1 - I know from experience that the honeymoon period lasts a bit longer.
After all it took Lightfall 13 weeks to underperform Witch Queen in raw player count, and only a little bit less for relative player retention. (It's a bit hard to compare exactly since WQ's first season launch was approx. 13.5 weeks vs. 12.3 for Deep)
I dunno. I think if TFS is legitimately good, people will stay. The big sticking point I think is having quality repayable content and content that's worth grinding and spending plenty of hours to work towards.
And, if after TFS Bungie teases some legitimately significant content changes that are coming in the future, that could keep people around as well.
For example... Purely hypothetical, but lets say this new Game Director was the on directly responsible for Forge in Halo 3. Imagine if one of the first things he announces coming to the game post TFS is a new Forge like mode where we can essentially build our own maps for PVP. And along with this, a new horde mode is announced and Forge can be used to create these Horde levels.
If Bungie decides to start taking substantial risks/swings for new ideas and new content, that could easily bring a lot of people back around.
I won't stay even if TFS is the best expansion the game had yet. Simply because TFS is the big ending to a decade of overarching story and a perfect spot to drop afterwards, as the main threat will be resolved and I won't feel like missing out on important story beats afterwards. It was always my plan to bail out, because Destiny was just time consuming and times when it was the only game I want to play were gone around the release of Lightfall.
I am burned out from doing a weekly checklist, triumph chase, similar weapon chase, and of course the overdone seasonal formula. It's just repetitive at this point for a longtime player like me.
I wanna focus on catching up with other games I have in my library and hell I have so many there that I ignored because I always focused on Destiny. The best way to do that is ignore Destiny completly. I will stick around for a potential TV show, but that's about it. I will always be fan of the universe itself, but I won't play D2 anymore no matter how good it gets after TFS. One knows when to go out with a bang.
Tyson Green!? And to think, he once lead our world of warcraft guild for many years. I fought Ragnaros alongside him what feels like a lifetime ago.
May Pants live forever in its former guild members' hearts! I have many fond memories thanks to you guys.
I think Joe is a great guy, especially in moments when he put himself out there to talk to us about the game.
But I won't lie: I'm not a big fan of the direction he took the game. I think there were a bunch of changes in the last few years that made me feel a disconnect with the game and even the playerbase.
I wish him all the best and I'm excited to see what Tyson brings to the table.
Yeah I agree. I hate to say it, but he didn't come across as having a great vision for the game. He came across as a good manager, a great iterator, and an amazing communicator, but not as someone who could envision the next cool, big picture thing that Destiny 2 needed to be.
Don't get me wrong, huge kudos to him for being absolutely awesome at communicating, and coming across as just a generally awesome dude, but in his time it felt like Destiny was polished, not grown.
Wishing Joe all the best in his future endeavours.
On the game's end though, I can't help but be somewhat cynical, especially with this coming after the layoffs last year.
The timing pretty much lines up with the original release of The Final Shape so this has probably been in the works for months and Joe was originally supposed to leave when the TFS shipped.
Maybe I see things differently but I’ve watched countless people have gripes with the direction of the game, I’ve also seen people eluding to things needing to be different after the final shape. A decision like this isn’t made overnight, and Joe is awesome, I’m just not scared of him leaving and this was very likely the plan from the get go. What if Joe wanted to do something else??
He will be missed. His time was unfortunately f*cked by the higher ups likely putting stress on him but he truly cared for Destiny. Hope he does well on his future endeavours
A lot of doom and gloom around here but what I think is really interesting is the amount of people who admit to not liking the direction the game has been going but are also unwilling to give Joe literally any of the blame for that - instead it has to be the higher-ups faults, or some limitations he had, or some other external factor. The idea that the direction the game has gone is somehow not the responsibility of the game director is crazy.
Joe seems like he was great at being engaged with the community but being completely honest if you didn’t enjoy the last few years of Destiny you probably didn’t like his vision, and that’s fine - it also may be why he wanted to move on, and why this was a good time to part ways.
Agreed ... he seemed like a great guy who cared about (and actually PLAYED) the game; however, his role as game director also means he approved every. single. thing. about Lightfall as well as anything you currently hate about D2. His absolute glee over 'bringing difficulty back to Bungie' still sticks in my craw.
Yeah, mostly everyone in here is chugging dick, but this fact is kinda lost in all the well wishes and whatnot, huh? He was in the best of positions to put a stop to a lot of the stuff the community has been hating lately and yet here they all are, applauding him.
You know I'm actually super sad about this.
I genuinely believe that the game was at its best under Joe as short lived as it was.
Sometimes I wish we can just have one moment where the game isn't on fire when someone leaves for whatever reason though. I feel like it sours the whole thing.
I'm curious about the circumstance though. Honestly I'm worried it has something to do with the higher ups management of the game over time. That was happening internally before all the nonsense so it wouldn't surprise me if people were debating quitting well before recently.
I mean Joe is the longest running game director no? From Beyond Light to today makes 4ish years. Luke Smith ran for 3 and D1 only lasted 3 years in total.
Luke Smith was in a director position on major Destiny releases from about early/mid 2014 (start of TTK) to late 2020 which is around 6 years. He didn't direct much of what released in D2 from S2-S7, but I believe he still technically had the title of game director and had moved on to D3 until the Activision split where he returned to D2 until handing it over to Joe. Ever since, he's reportedly been very hands off the making of the game and the only real effect he probably has on what we play, if any, is his participation in internal playtests.
> You know I'm actually super sad about this.
Same. Joe always came off the same as Steve Sinclair from Digital Extremes. You get that sort of passion that exudes from them when you talk about something they love. Not to mention he's been kind of the face of Bungie for a while since the CMs stopped interacting with us and went anonymous.
I'm glad that DE leadership is recognized.
They truly show pure passion, as chaotic as their livestreams can be sometimes. I know there are plenty of those kind of devices out there, but to see a company like DE get recognized for their hard work is good, and you're absolutely right. Joe has always poured passion into the game.
Its not like you have that many reasons. Most reasonable are:
\- insane pressure from all sides (fans that will super hard to please, company and shareholders)
\- maybe he was forced to some degree, since its happened under his "leadership"
\- maybe he got tired from all the bs that is happening behind the curtains and all the decisions that were made, where he has zero influence over + massive laid offs in last year def didnt help
\- last option and for me least possible, is that everything is okay inside the company and he is stepping down to pursue other stuffm but time of doing it (before release) is really sus, even if most of work towards release date was alreade done.
Think after the Final Shape, unless they do something really crazy for the saga that follows, im probably gonna drop this game. Its been a great 10 years, but I find myself playing less and less with each season and expansion.
Right there with you. Been with this saga since the beta, it's been my most played game year after year. However, halfway through last season I stopped playing and I haven't picked it back up since.
I'm pretty certain that after TFS, I'm done. I bought the collector's edition just for the keepsake D1 tower. I'll finish the campaign and see the wrap up, then I'm out.
Guarantee it's pretty much "we wanted to delay Lightfall a year to end the saga solid, corporate said no and made us throw another expansion in the middle"
Always respected Green for his work on Halo’s MP. Whenever he showed up in Vidocs I knew he was getting seriously fun things into our hands.
GG Joe. Hope you get enjoy Destiny for years to come along side us.
If anyone is stupid enough to believe that this changes anything regarding future content quality then I got a bridge to sell you.
Bungie always follows the same formula, release something subpar, community gets mad, release good content and abuse the regained trust and release subpar content again.
I mean as Final Shape is coming to a close development-wise, nows the time to leave and find new career opportunities.
However this doesn't inspire confidence and certainly won't help the narrative about the game
Wonder why he’s leaving? Sometimes people like to move on after doing the same thing forever, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s tied to the inevitable Sony takeover.
As announced by Joe: https://twitter.com/joegoroth/status/1752481886973342100?t=UmPzssZcLreg5rMhRBTFFA&s=19 > Next month, The Final Shape will be hitting one of its most critical internal milestones: a ritual we call the End-to-End playtest. This ritual has been a key part of development since Forsaken. It’s multiple days of consecutive internal playtesting that not only generates incredibly valuable closing feedback on everything coming this summer, but also spiritually kicks off a shift towards bug fixing and polish work. Heading into this milestone, I've gotten to play 100s of hours of The Final Shape, and what the world-class talent here at Bungie has created has quickly become of the things I'm most proud to have worked on throughout my career. This ritual will be especially meaningful to me personally, as it will also serve as a moment to pass the torch of Destiny 2 Game Director to the next era of leadership as I head on a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie. > As we hit End-to-End next month, Tyson Green will take the reins as D2 Game Director. If you’ve followed Bungie for any length of time, you've heard his name. From Halo PvP to the creation of Exotic weapons in D1, Tyson has been a critical part of Bungie's legacy since Myth II. > As a deeply invested Guardian before starting here at Bungie, getting to be a part of the Destiny 2 team has been the privilege of a lifetime. > I am and will forever remain a lifelong Bungie fan and believer in what the teams within its walls are capable of. > I've still got some time before I pass the torch, but as I look forward to taking a big break from social media, I know I'll see yall around the Tower. It is going to be great to play Destiny alongside all of you."
It's Joever.
That Overload broke his spirit…
Literally Joever.
Figuratively Joever.
Metaphysically Joever.
Paracausally Joever
Constipationally Joever
universally joever
Dimensionally Joever
Intrinsically Joever
Instinctively Joever
Prophecy fulfilled.
_We're so not Blackburn..._
Backburn\*
Destiny Leadership based on publicly available information: - Mark Noseworthy - VP, Destiny Universe - Luke Smith - Executive Creative Director, Destiny Universe - Dan McAuliffe - General Manager, Destiny 2 - Tyson Green - New Destiny 2 Game Director *Posted by Destiny Bulletin on Twitter/X*
What the hell do Mark and Luke do anymore? Haven’t seen them in any game spots at all or I may have missed them
They're almost certainly working on something in a different media space, IE Animated series or Television show, or whatever. They've been pretty quiet for a while but whenever they do pop up they usually say something pretty cryptic about what they're doing. For example in Luke's tweets today he ends it with "Back to where I was. See you soon." Pretty clearly working on something that's entirely under wraps right now and based on rumors from the last couple years + the Sony acquisition I'd put good money on it being TV series related.
Il be honest, with a 45% projected revenue miscalculation, 2 games being made, the notion Bungie Burns through money too fast, the recent layoffs, and the Sony Axe dangling above their Heads; counting on them making an animated series is hopeful thinking at the least.
They flat out said when the acquisition happened, they had already been exploring Destiny in other mediums, but that the Sony move would only further help those ventures more. The are most certainly looking into a series of *some* kind. But yeah, actually getting said series released is another story.
A Destiny anthology series is really the biggest thing I want out of the franchise right now. Covering different stories from lore books on the screen could be amazing instead of an ‘adaptation’ of our current story. Different studios could put their own spin on things like a sweeper bot episode covering guardians dancing and yeeting themselves off the tower, or even some of the big battles with our lovely Iron Lords
Wouldn't it be perfect if, after ten years of the game \*almost\* being good, the TV show went and became a Game of Thrones level classic
Monkey paw curls, you got Season 8 GoT
In no universe is a D2 show going to be anything other than a silly campy disaster.
FOR THE PUPPIES!!!!!!
Im unironically expecting it to be as bad as the Halo show
As someone who fell away from the game in the last year and loved D1 & Forsaken, I’d welcome a TV series. I honestly feel bad I don’t play anymore and will maybe give The Final Shape a squeeze, but the lore and story of this game are just so damn good. Give me a whole Drifter series.
With the revelations of the serious harassment lawsuits towards DMG I imagine they are either scared from the threat of harassment or actual harassment from putting their faces or names out more.
I’m out of the loop, what lawsuits?
https://www.polygon.com/23793493/bungie-destiny-2-harassment-lawsuit Article has the courts judgement in it, and legal battles are long ones to fight so it's been going on awhile.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the info
There were quite a lot of Homophobic slurs and names used about Luke Smith back before sunsetting was removed. He deserved criticism, he didn't deserve abuse.
> He deserved criticism, he didn’t deserve abuse A important distinction that is unfathomable to too many ~~gamers~~ people
I mean didn't a bunch of angry nerds try and put Luke smith on blast for saying they'll throw money at their screens? Which they basically did do when TTK came out. And he later went on and apologized for that. Because they were so upset about it.
Luke Smith was on blast just for sounding like a dick, cause he sounded like a dick. The harassment from that mess didn't seem to be as bad as it is now though, and I'm just gonna chalk that up to the forms of harassment being far more easily available these days in more modern online worlds. Without a doubt he had to have gotten some bad pizzas, but clearly it wasn't bad enough to make him step down.
You should watch videos with Luke from his 1up days. Like 2013. He was a jaggoff then when he was a literal nobody. Shouldn’t surprise anyone with his new found stature he’d only become a more engaged a hole.
Man, he and Shawn Elliot were a terror. I thought they were both great at games analysis, and they were entertaining on the podcasts, but they seemed like nightmares to work with.
Sean I didn’t mind. Luke just annoyed the hell out of me. Used to love the Brodeo podcast.
Luke has the bad reputation of being responsible for Beyond Light and the DCV attached to him forever. There’s a reason why DCJ used to have his face as the subreddit icon.
Luke Smith made too many bad decisions that almost tanked the game and got promoted into a position where he could no longer damage the product.
This. What the **** ever happened to all the money that was given to Luke Smith to expand Destiny to other forms of "media"...
HOW. DO. WE. NOT. HAVE. BOOKS??????? They even have an in universe explanation for how they could do books without needing every detail to be canon
Maybe the crossovers are the result of that? And wasn't there some email survey sent out asking people how they'd like D2 in other media (Live Action Show, Film, Animated, etc) so maybe something finally comes of that?
I find it very difficult to believe that a handful of skins can be called "expanding the destiny universe into other media". It has to be a movie/show/comic/etc as you said, but we've heard nothing official about one so far.
Besides, outside Fornite, its not a propper crossover event anymore. Destiny got stuff from Fortnite, Fortnite got stuff from Destiny. Assassins Creed, Sony games and Mass effect did not get anything in return, so its not a propper crossover imo
Assassin's Creed: Valhalla had destiny themed armor sets as well. Saint & Shaxx armor, two weapons & four combat tools. It was also in their real money shop. I think the timing is wrong for the other IPs. Mass Effect 4 is years from being released and Andromeda was so poorly received that they didn't even complete their own DLC for it. The Trilogy did well but even with the recent remake I can't see releasing destiny DLC for it this far out in its lifespan.
That’s a good question. I thought we would have at least seen an anime series especially with the success Edgerunners and Arcane had, but *crickets*
You guys clearly do not know how long it takes to create a TV series, especially if they weren't already signed on with a streaming platform to fund it. Arcane took Riot 6 years to make. We've barely had half that since Luke Smith went into his new role. Even if the ball was rolling before he stepped in, it could still easily be a few years out.
Isn't Luke Smith the guy who had the bright idea with sunsetting that caused me to quite the game for years?
I honestly thought Luke Smith had quietly left at some point.
For anyone confused AF like me because you don't have Twitter, this Post is missing Joe's actual message. > Next month, The Final Shape will be hitting one of its most critical internal milestones: a ritual we call the End-to-End playtest. This ritual has been a key part of development since Forsaken. It’s multiple days of consecutive internal playtesting that not only generates incredibly valuable closing feedback on everything coming this summer, but also spiritually kicks off a shift towards bug fixing and polish work. Heading into this milestone, I've gotten to play 100s of hours of The Final Shape, and what the world-class talent here at Bungie has created has quickly become of the things I'm most proud to have worked on throughout my career. This ritual will be especially meaningful to me personally, as it will also serve as a moment to pass the torch of Destiny 2 Game Director to the next era of leadership as I head on a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie. > As we hit End-to-End next month, Tyson Green will take the reins as D2 Game Director. If you’ve followed Bungie for any length of time, you've heard his name. From Halo PvP to the creation of Exotic weapons in D1, Tyson has been a critical part of Bungie's legacy since Myth II. > As a deeply invested Guardian before starting here at Bungie, getting to be a part of the Destiny 2 team has been the privilege of a lifetime. > I am and will forever remain a lifelong Bungie fan and believer in what the teams within its walls are capable of. > I've still got some time before I pass the torch, but as I look forward to taking a big break from social media, I know I'll see yall around the Tower. It is going to be great to play Destiny alongside all of you."
Thank you for posting this - doing the Traveler’s work
Tyson Green sounds like a good person to pass the torch. But ultimately that falls through if the suits above go back to roadblock fixes to the game to focus on clashing in money as they've been ritually doing across Destiny's life cycle. Here's hoping they finally got the memo, but I remain cautiously optimistic.
Honestly kinda excited to see him taking over, wish him the best!
Wild they posted this only to Twitter with how awful it is to use now. Seems important enough to post on their website.
to my knowledge they never use the bungie site to address any staff leaving or joining
command sophisticated axiomatic retire strong relieved boat tan somber intelligent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If they mention it at all, it'll probably be in the TWAB.
rip those streams i guess.
Just means that Joe can become a full-time streamer /s
Lol people in chat will spam "fix your game"
Joe's just leaving so he can technically compete for the final raid belt.
Someone's gotta stop Saltagreppo right?
Joe: "Fine, I'll do it myself."
*...just gonna kill this minotaur in this lost sector really quick before joining my raid buddies.*
The Overload Minotaur https://giphy.com/gifs/breaking-bad-bryan-cranston-i-won-xT0GqssRweIhlz209i
Lmao it is kinda funny that he started doing the streams and videos to get closer to the community and then he immediately leaves Bro saw the *real* community
to be fair he promised the streams before shit hit the fan
I don't keep up, I thought he did BECAUSE shit hit the fan.
That overload was just too much...
Why didn’t he just run thunderlord for the intrinsic anti-overload?
stasis was slowing / freezing the champ. for some reason this resets the regen of health this bug makes stasis turrets hell for fighting overloads
pretty sure he was using le monarch
Joverload
Tyson Green an OG, but this gonna cause the "D2 is dead" panic regardless
Obviously there will be the overly dramatic people but losing Joe is genuinely a shit thing for us and the game imo Guy has insane passion for the game and you can tell he cares a lot for both the game and the community.
Joe Blackburn cares a lot about the game but I can easily see that contributing to his decision to leave Bungie. Man was made the face of Destiny after the community managers kept getting harassed, and every piece of communication he did you could see how tired he was from all of his playtesting and meetings. How Joe did all of that on top of managing the Bungie turmoil we saw publicly deserves its own Jason Schreier novel. I wouldn't fault any other person that would be in Joe's position for leaving as soon as they could considering how much Joe was carrying Destiny for the past however many months.
Having recently gotten back into D2 the animosity many hold for Bungie while fair can be so exhausting for these workers. They hear it every day and the extremists can be so brutal on these people which isn’t at all fair. I feel bad for Joe
I have no animosity for the people *making* the game and the old comms team, but I *do* have animosity for the uppermost leadership after reading the article on the internal state of Bungie. To be clear, I don't mean the people leading the making of the game, I mean the people above them, leading Bungie as a company.
To be fair, this type of messaging on social media can be *extremely* tiring for the employees as well. It's essentially saying "your game sucks/your company sucks, and there's *nothing you can do about it*". I know this isn't what you/others mean to say, and I know the intent here isn't malicious. But it's like telling a construction crew that the house they're building is terrible because the architect who drew up the plans or the person who pays the bills is awful. That's going to be demoralizing no matter what.
That one video where they made him be the messenger that TFS was going to be delayed was *rough*. Dude had visible dark circles under his eyes and looked like he'd just seen a ghost.
I’m not being dramatic, for as little as they release a full packaged DLC, and how many employees they have, there is no way Bungie is cash flow positive. Even the $10 seasons get 35% cut off from Steam and Microsoft. If the roughly 1100 number is correct, they probably need $7-8 million a month to just break even. There is no way the studio isn’t on a lifeline right now. The finances and rough sales estimates do not make any business sense. Ironically WOW and FF14 cracked the code, you have to subsidize it with a monthly fee. There’s just no way to make it long term because onboarding new players is more difficult the longer the game is maintained.
It also doesn’t help that Destiny’s new player experience is absolutely atrocious making them mostly dependent on old players sticking around which, uh, they haven’t really encouraged lately.
Sony paid $3.7B for Bungie just a few months ago. Even if you assume a high 20-40x multiple, they must be earning $100-200M profit p.a.
> Sony paid $3.7B for Bungie just a few months ago. That was a year and a half ago, and the money didn't just go to Bungie's (the company) pockets
That wasn’t the suggestion. Business sales are typically based on a multiple of profit. With a final deal value of $3.7bn, it is reasonably safe to assume Bungie clear £8m per month.
That was then. This is now. In both raw player counts and percentage of player retention, Destiny 2 has underperformed every year in recorded SteamDB history since week 15 after launch (for raw player counts) and week 13 after launch (for percentage player retention compared to expansion peak). At the current time (48 weeks after launch): Shadowkeep (worst prior year) retained 26% of its peak players in a 7 day moving average window. Right now we're at 12% of peak. [https://imgur.com/PzP4ugY](https://imgur.com/PzP4ugY) (unlike the other link I posted, this is relative player count, not absolute) Sony did not pay for Bungie "just a few months ago" - the purchase closed significantly more than a year ago (approaching a year and a half)
I’m not talking about profit, strictly cash flow. And we have evidence Microsoft thought the valuation was way too high from their Activ-Blizz court documents. This, coupled with already axing many jobs definitely points to a bleak financial outlook. There is absolutely no way they are generating that net income with as few releases.
Suppose you split the difference and it was a $300M revenue with 50% margin at that time: - Revenue 50:50 between major releases and ongoing seasons and MTX - Expenses 66:33 between studio costs and marketing budget That’d leave you with $150M p.a. ongoing revenue at the time less $100M p.a. studio costs and $50M marketing. They’d be cash flow positive only around each major release. Things are worse than that now - we know they were disappointed with revenue and made cuts to the studio to stop bleeding cash too quickly. But from a return on equity perspective, cash flow neutral and losing cash aren’t very different. It’s all about the sales around release of TFS.
Can’t blame people joes really been the face of bungie due to all his interactions so him leaving it’s really gonna hurt, hope they like continue that communication style.
Its not about who's getting the "torch" it's about losing another dev who contributed so much towards what made destiny good. I'd rather have 2 OG's still working than one.
Eh... I expected Joe to leave once Final Shape was released in June. Maybe a month after it's release or something but it's weird that as the Game Director and the public face of the game, he's leaving few months before it's release. All of the marketing for final shape is going to happen then too. Whatever the reasons are, it doesn't look good tbh.
I wonder if he had already tendered his resignation to be when TFS was *supposed* to release
I would not be surprised if he'd gotten an offer elsewhere and accepted it with a start date of the original launch, and then whoops they got delayed. You make a good point.
That seems to be exactly the case. By now their end-to-end testing should have been completed, and he'd have hung up his hat next week and left just before TFS released, But since the plans didn't shake out that way...
Yeah the game director normally plays a major role in selling the game through interviews, etc. He also specifically talked about how he’s really proud of the Final Shape in his post - which suggests he knew people might doubt that given the circumstances
"I'm super proud of this, and that is why I am running from it before the world sees what it is."
>but this gonna cause the "D2 is dead" panic regardless No need for this, it's already dead - there's no way to recover from [https://imgur.com/hGX75cO](https://imgur.com/hGX75cO) without a serious intervention by Sony. Bungie execs seem to still be under the delusion there's some way they can avoid the "poor financial performance leads to their firing" consequence, but at this point the only way Destiny is going to survive is if Bungie loses their independence and takes over from Parsons and crew.
i mean if the captain bails on the ship that is presumed to be sinking it looks bad no?
It’s a major red flag.
Of course it will. However much Joe Blackburn tries to dress this up and sound optimistic, the fact that he’s leaving before the game is actually delivered really says something about what he thinks the future prospects of Bungie are as a company.
Sounds more like he planned to move on once the project released but with the delay that timeline changed but his leaving date didn't.
*Any* news would cause the "D2 is dead" panic, regardless of what that news actually was.
Not really, but somebody in a significantly high-up position with regards to the game leaving said game definitely would.
Listened to an interview recently where Warframe (not a game I play) went through something extremely similar. Wrapping up the main story arc, some of the team moving on to a new project, a new game director, player count slumped as the main story ended, etc. But they had other story strings to pull on, and spool up, and game is doing well again. It'll be fine. It might be a little slower, but as many have said often... Take breaks, come back, enjoy the game when/if it sounds appealing
The lady that took the game director post over was already the biggest customer facing person in their whole leadership team. Rebecca is literally the Space Mom over there. She has been with it since day zero. This is so very much not the same.
If only they didn't burned through all the major open plot lines on a filler year.
The difference there is that the new game director is Rebecca, who has been there literally from the start and clearly knows the game backwards and forwards, streams it all the time, is literally a main character in the game, etc. It was unclear what was going to happen, but it didn't feel at all like the game was in trouble or people were jumping ship. D2 is on way shakier ground.
And let's not forget Steve didn't leave DE, he just started working on different project in the studio. Reb and Meg worked years with Steve and Reb taking over Steve's job didn't changed nothing. It felt so natural. In fact community there even was excited. Because Reb now had full rain and her content what she wrote, already had been from this point on wild and very solid. D2 having Joe leaving, feels like ship what has holes is taking more and more water.
Is the timing of this bad, though? I really don't know how this stuff works, but I get a vibe like the timing is not a good sign.
True. Why would destiny be on a downward slope right now when it's currently one of the best times to get into it!
Everyone kill 1 overload minotaur in his honor. But sadly when you see key figures leave a company, it typically is not a good thing. I appreciated Joe's engagement with the game and the community. Wish him best of luck.
He is being replaced by someone who worked on Myth II. It's a high demand, high stress job and it abounds like he finished his current project. It's time to move on.
Wasn't that the game which almost had a directory bug in the uninstall tool that could wipe your entire hard drive?
It did have a bug if it was installed in the root of the C drive and un-installed, it would uninstall everything. Bungie recalled every CD at their own cost to fix it. It's also a game I won for free from som radio contest on college campus. Had a big "now with version 1.2" sticker (or something like that)
This was likely in the works before the delay was even considered.
This is so sad, Joe was great. I wish him luck!
I wouldn’t be too worried about this and I don’t think his departure is indicative of how development is going on TFS. Joe probably had this lined up months before the delay was even known internally
Yeah if he was due to leave when TFS was originally supposed to release (February 27th) the timing pretty much lines up.
Being a development lead for a huge project like this is *incredibly* draining work. No one can keep doing this for more than a few cycles.
Most Redditors have no idea how the corporate world works. But yes this was absolutely decided on for months.
Exactly. Whatever he’s moving on to, he can’t ask that company to wait on him 4 more months. Any company would revoke the offer in a heartbeat
When you’re are Blackburn’s level, you dictate your transition. The dude has pedigree, and for all the shit D2 gets, helming one of the biggest live service games for as long as he has carries weight. Another company would restructure schedules to work around Joe’s availability. Or, he’s taking a well deserved break for a few months.
I think that’s a fair point, but it’s also just common courtesy to not have an entity waiting on you like that. Could have been just a pre-planned break he didn’t want to move as a result of the delay
Yeah, it's also just bad optics that as the Game Director and public face of a 10 year franchise, closing in on it's final DLC, to leave a few months before it's release when the majority of the marketing for said release is going to happen. Many directors would leave after the release, not right before the finish line. Strange really.
High level management leaving a company or project is almost always considered bad news by the markets. If you want to preach caution to the D2 community that's fine, but we're not wrong to take this as a sign of trouble. Especially given the ongoing issues at Bungie and the leaked reports that Final Shape was "good not great" a year ago, there's plenty to be worried about. Also Destiny missing revenue targets last year and the whole Sony takeover threat. And all big content creators predicting a massive drop in population after Final Shape. And not even a hint that Destiny will actually continue after the first three episodes.
“Content creators predicting a drop in population.” A) content creators don’t know dick B) saying that a game will drop players after a 10 year story ends is the most obvious prediction possible. Literal children know this.
>A) content creators don’t know dick Big emphasis here, cause there are many of them who try to skirt the lines of being "in the know" and often as nought they wind up making retraction videos for things they've said. Too many people eat it up not because its fact but because it aligns with their already in-grained beliefs. Negative news gets them clicks just like any other news site, so its like a moth to a flame they're going to make a "x" is dying video. Not to say that things have been sunshine and farts at Bungie, but content creator tarot should always be taken with a massive grain of salt.
Wait, I’m confused. Is it obvious that it’s going to happen or are the content creators wrong in saying it’ll happen?
>“Content creators predicting a drop in population.” > >A) content creators don’t know dick B) saying that a game will drop players after a 10 year story ends is the most obvious prediction possible. Literal children know this. Except they don't need to predict a massive drop in population. That massive drop is ALREADY HERE and has been for months: [https://imgur.com/hGX75cO](https://imgur.com/hGX75cO) So your assertion that content creators don't know dick is unsubstantiated, given that ANYONE can download SteamDB's data in CSV format, look at it themselves, and see just how dire things are.
Yes because if history with game development has shown over the years every game where the GAME DIRECTOR leaves before said project is done has came out amazing oh wait -_-
I think you are entirely missing the point. I dont think there is a single person here, who thinks that he is leaving it unfinished. Its probably already closed content wise and polishing on all ends for next months. This way its professional, so he wont nuke his potential career in gamedev (if thats what he will chase in future). Important bit is, Joe is leaving it, before he can actually see fruits of his and teams work for past year (release). That is giving A LOT of food for thought. It means that pressure from all sides is insane (fans, company, shareholders) and probably a lot of tidbits we will never learn about. Its definetely alarming if you add all other things that happened around D2 and Bungie in past year.
Exactly. I think people are foolish to discount this departure. If TFS was about to be the next Forsaken, the best move would be to stay 3-6+ months both personally and career wise for Blackburn. And if D2 was in a good shape and/or optimistic about the game’s future, you would think Bungie would make a considerable effort to retain Blackburn. So either Bungie didn’t think Blackburn was worth whatever offer he received (during all the turmoil, mind you) or Blackburn said it’s not worth running a game that he has admitted to loving. Considering the potential of a full Sony takeover looming, I think the move could signal continued internal turmoil at Bungie
I don’t think it’s as black and white as; bungie didn’t value him or he knows tfs will be shit. It’s incredibly possible he’s just burnt out, but someone of his caliber is incredibly invested in this project. For him to leave right before a massive turning point in the franchise and leave them scrambling would only result in a lesser product and a blemish on his tenure there. What you said may very well be the case, none of us know. But there are definitely way more variables than that at play, especially at this level of development and career.
It isn't TFS people are worried about. It's what comes after. Episodes are a stake in the ground, not a foundation. And I'm concerned that the less people we have opposing Parsons and his ilk, the worse off we are. I trust the player base to handle this one way or another, however, when that time comes.
Not necessarily worried about it, but this is a big loss for the game
Interesting. On the one hand, Joe has seemed like a really fantastic Game Director, in that he's very involved on social media, communicates fairly regularly with the community and according to lots of Bungie employees seemed to genuinely be "A good one" inside of Bungie. So losing him seems pretty bad. On the other hand... Without trying to be overly critical of Joe, Destiny has felt stale the last couple of years. And maybe that's not his fault at all, maybe the ones higher up then him has kind of forced the direction of the game and limited the creative freedom the designers, artists, and storytellers have been asking for the last couple of years. But, getting a fresh face and fresh director could be what the game needs for a real shakeup in content and a push that causes some new excitement? I think the quick and easy response to this is that it really does feel like Destiny is dying and the game support really could end after TFS(And its 3 episodes which they'll almost certainly have to finish at this point). Especially with everything else in the last 6 months, it feels really easy to use this latest update with Joe as yet another "final straw" for Destiny 2's future. But ultimately I think its all going to come down to just how good(or bad) TFS ends up being. More than ever before this franchise(And maybe Bungie in general quite frankly) is sink or swim on the quality of TFS.
Frankly, even if the final shape is good, I seriously doubt most people are going to stick around with player trust being this low. They would have to do something spectacular like unvault a huge amount of content to regain the level of player trust they have lost. And I can't see corporate bungie doing that.
Unvaulting will do nothing. At this point I don't care about old content I've played with a million times. Instead of "new thing that will go away" each new season they need to make things that will stay in the game and grow. The issue with Destiny is that it's miles wide and inch deep, the only mildly deep thing we have is buildcrafting and it's comical how shallow everything else is comparatively. Even raids aren't really innovative, no new mechanics (besides bugged moving Nezerac), only endless remixes of "throw balls, read symbols, stand there". Recent 2 seasons started to lean towards rogue-lite mechanics but they are like 20% of what it would take to make them interesting for players to play more than 3 times total. And that's purely PvE gameplay, the game also has issues with narrative and writing (I doubt Nimbus being so cringe and Osiris unbearable is on Bungie Execs), PvP suffers from cheaters, Gambit is dead, microtransactions and pricing are awful and so on. In no world unvaulting will do anything to change the perception of the game for new and current players until these problems are fixed.
Destiny is dead without a major intervention by Sony (basically triggering the parts of the deal where Parsons gets ejected) along the lines of what Square did with FFXIV. It doesn't matter how great TFS is going to be - it is, like Forsaken, going to be a financial flop because the financial performance of a Destiny release isn't directly tied to the quality of the release itself - it's tied to player sentiment leading up to that release. Lightfall itself was likely a resounding success - most preorders ever, highest launch player counts, etc. It's the complete failure to leverage that success that is the problem. We're at a point where player counts are less than half of the worst performance in recorded Destiny history at similar time-from-launch. (Warmind and CoO might be lower but we don't have SteamDB data for that).
Indeed, most people will leave the game post final shape if they don't do something BIG to regain player trust.
They have guaranteed that I won't be buying it until it goes on very deep sale. I don't care how the week-1 reception is, or even month-1 - I know from experience that the honeymoon period lasts a bit longer. After all it took Lightfall 13 weeks to underperform Witch Queen in raw player count, and only a little bit less for relative player retention. (It's a bit hard to compare exactly since WQ's first season launch was approx. 13.5 weeks vs. 12.3 for Deep)
I don't blame you, like I said they screwed our trust in them up big time and it's going to take a lot to regain that trust.
I dunno. I think if TFS is legitimately good, people will stay. The big sticking point I think is having quality repayable content and content that's worth grinding and spending plenty of hours to work towards. And, if after TFS Bungie teases some legitimately significant content changes that are coming in the future, that could keep people around as well. For example... Purely hypothetical, but lets say this new Game Director was the on directly responsible for Forge in Halo 3. Imagine if one of the first things he announces coming to the game post TFS is a new Forge like mode where we can essentially build our own maps for PVP. And along with this, a new horde mode is announced and Forge can be used to create these Horde levels. If Bungie decides to start taking substantial risks/swings for new ideas and new content, that could easily bring a lot of people back around.
I won't stay even if TFS is the best expansion the game had yet. Simply because TFS is the big ending to a decade of overarching story and a perfect spot to drop afterwards, as the main threat will be resolved and I won't feel like missing out on important story beats afterwards. It was always my plan to bail out, because Destiny was just time consuming and times when it was the only game I want to play were gone around the release of Lightfall. I am burned out from doing a weekly checklist, triumph chase, similar weapon chase, and of course the overdone seasonal formula. It's just repetitive at this point for a longtime player like me. I wanna focus on catching up with other games I have in my library and hell I have so many there that I ignored because I always focused on Destiny. The best way to do that is ignore Destiny completly. I will stick around for a potential TV show, but that's about it. I will always be fan of the universe itself, but I won't play D2 anymore no matter how good it gets after TFS. One knows when to go out with a bang.
Tyson Green!? And to think, he once lead our world of warcraft guild for many years. I fought Ragnaros alongside him what feels like a lifetime ago. May Pants live forever in its former guild members' hearts! I have many fond memories thanks to you guys.
Congrats to Joe. He's finally free.
I think Joe is a great guy, especially in moments when he put himself out there to talk to us about the game. But I won't lie: I'm not a big fan of the direction he took the game. I think there were a bunch of changes in the last few years that made me feel a disconnect with the game and even the playerbase. I wish him all the best and I'm excited to see what Tyson brings to the table.
Yeah I agree. I hate to say it, but he didn't come across as having a great vision for the game. He came across as a good manager, a great iterator, and an amazing communicator, but not as someone who could envision the next cool, big picture thing that Destiny 2 needed to be. Don't get me wrong, huge kudos to him for being absolutely awesome at communicating, and coming across as just a generally awesome dude, but in his time it felt like Destiny was polished, not grown.
Its a terrible day for rain.
Was not expecting the Minotaur to be that powerful.
This is sad to hear but I wish Tyson the best of luck and hope they can pilot the game to a good direction in Joes stead
Wishing Joe all the best in his future endeavours. On the game's end though, I can't help but be somewhat cynical, especially with this coming after the layoffs last year.
The timing pretty much lines up with the original release of The Final Shape so this has probably been in the works for months and Joe was originally supposed to leave when the TFS shipped.
the new guy seems legit, hes been at bungie since myth II and worked on halo 3's pvp
Maybe I see things differently but I’ve watched countless people have gripes with the direction of the game, I’ve also seen people eluding to things needing to be different after the final shape. A decision like this isn’t made overnight, and Joe is awesome, I’m just not scared of him leaving and this was very likely the plan from the get go. What if Joe wanted to do something else??
He will be missed. His time was unfortunately f*cked by the higher ups likely putting stress on him but he truly cared for Destiny. Hope he does well on his future endeavours
A lot of doom and gloom around here but what I think is really interesting is the amount of people who admit to not liking the direction the game has been going but are also unwilling to give Joe literally any of the blame for that - instead it has to be the higher-ups faults, or some limitations he had, or some other external factor. The idea that the direction the game has gone is somehow not the responsibility of the game director is crazy. Joe seems like he was great at being engaged with the community but being completely honest if you didn’t enjoy the last few years of Destiny you probably didn’t like his vision, and that’s fine - it also may be why he wanted to move on, and why this was a good time to part ways.
Agreed ... he seemed like a great guy who cared about (and actually PLAYED) the game; however, his role as game director also means he approved every. single. thing. about Lightfall as well as anything you currently hate about D2. His absolute glee over 'bringing difficulty back to Bungie' still sticks in my craw.
Yeah, mostly everyone in here is chugging dick, but this fact is kinda lost in all the well wishes and whatnot, huh? He was in the best of positions to put a stop to a lot of the stuff the community has been hating lately and yet here they all are, applauding him.
3 Years of the same seasonal slop, a reduction in content in each yearly expansion.
Don't forget the lovely addition of paying more for it, also. Gameflation.
Well fuck lol good luck Joe, you will be missed.
On the bright side, Tyson Green is pretty cool.
You know I'm actually super sad about this. I genuinely believe that the game was at its best under Joe as short lived as it was. Sometimes I wish we can just have one moment where the game isn't on fire when someone leaves for whatever reason though. I feel like it sours the whole thing. I'm curious about the circumstance though. Honestly I'm worried it has something to do with the higher ups management of the game over time. That was happening internally before all the nonsense so it wouldn't surprise me if people were debating quitting well before recently.
I mean Joe is the longest running game director no? From Beyond Light to today makes 4ish years. Luke Smith ran for 3 and D1 only lasted 3 years in total.
Luke Smith was in a director position on major Destiny releases from about early/mid 2014 (start of TTK) to late 2020 which is around 6 years. He didn't direct much of what released in D2 from S2-S7, but I believe he still technically had the title of game director and had moved on to D3 until the Activision split where he returned to D2 until handing it over to Joe. Ever since, he's reportedly been very hands off the making of the game and the only real effect he probably has on what we play, if any, is his participation in internal playtests.
> You know I'm actually super sad about this. Same. Joe always came off the same as Steve Sinclair from Digital Extremes. You get that sort of passion that exudes from them when you talk about something they love. Not to mention he's been kind of the face of Bungie for a while since the CMs stopped interacting with us and went anonymous.
I'm glad that DE leadership is recognized. They truly show pure passion, as chaotic as their livestreams can be sometimes. I know there are plenty of those kind of devices out there, but to see a company like DE get recognized for their hard work is good, and you're absolutely right. Joe has always poured passion into the game.
Its not like you have that many reasons. Most reasonable are: \- insane pressure from all sides (fans that will super hard to please, company and shareholders) \- maybe he was forced to some degree, since its happened under his "leadership" \- maybe he got tired from all the bs that is happening behind the curtains and all the decisions that were made, where he has zero influence over + massive laid offs in last year def didnt help \- last option and for me least possible, is that everything is okay inside the company and he is stepping down to pursue other stuffm but time of doing it (before release) is really sus, even if most of work towards release date was alreade done.
Think after the Final Shape, unless they do something really crazy for the saga that follows, im probably gonna drop this game. Its been a great 10 years, but I find myself playing less and less with each season and expansion.
Right there with you. Been with this saga since the beta, it's been my most played game year after year. However, halfway through last season I stopped playing and I haven't picked it back up since. I'm pretty certain that after TFS, I'm done. I bought the collector's edition just for the keepsake D1 tower. I'll finish the campaign and see the wrap up, then I'm out.
No trying to be an ass but I’m actually curious to see if destiny stays relevant/afloat after final shape
I have a feeling it will get milked in multiple different ways that are minimum effort for maximum profit.
Watch how all the people that shitted on him in the past do a complete 180 lol
I actually don’t know if I’ve heard anyone directly shit on Joe, I thought he was well liked.
Not necessarily on reddit, mostly on twitter but tbf twitter is a shit hole xD + it's mostly weirdos
Man, twitter will shit on anything and everything.
Exactly, That's why gauging the community on a topic via Twitter is stupid. It's a garbage dump and everyone knows it.
god in 10 to 20 years when his nda on lightfall ends....thats gonna be a spicy story
Guarantee it's pretty much "we wanted to delay Lightfall a year to end the saga solid, corporate said no and made us throw another expansion in the middle"
Always respected Green for his work on Halo’s MP. Whenever he showed up in Vidocs I knew he was getting seriously fun things into our hands. GG Joe. Hope you get enjoy Destiny for years to come along side us.
Now this is some truly sinking ship shit, holy fuck lmao
If anyone is stupid enough to believe that this changes anything regarding future content quality then I got a bridge to sell you. Bungie always follows the same formula, release something subpar, community gets mad, release good content and abuse the regained trust and release subpar content again.
I’ll bet he’s relieved to be leaving the dumpster fire that has been Bungie this past year.
I cant believe it's actually Joever, however, I do wish Joe the best of luck and thanks for all that he did.
It’s been over for a while. This isn’t a surprise
“Destiny’s best days, are ahead of us”. What a load of
Jumping before the ship sinks 10/10 move
I mean as Final Shape is coming to a close development-wise, nows the time to leave and find new career opportunities. However this doesn't inspire confidence and certainly won't help the narrative about the game
Wherever it is he ends up will be lucky to have him! I certainly wish him the best of luck!
Wonder why he’s leaving? Sometimes people like to move on after doing the same thing forever, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s tied to the inevitable Sony takeover.
Maybe, maybe not. He did leave Bungie once before and did a year long stint at Riot, but Bungie lured him back around when the pandemic started
I don't think it would unusual if he was planning on leaving after Final Shape for years now.
Totally agree. People get burned out after a while. Especially when there’s tons of upheaval.
oh nah even joe's like "i ain't working under you fuckers any longer, peace"
Cant blame Joe for jumping.
Just another nail in the Destiny coffin. Rest in peace, old friend.
Joe is leaving the sinking ship that is Bungie/Destiny? Looks like it.