• Bungie finally released a statement following a week of controversy for the developer.
• Unfortunately, the statement offers no answers and instead tries to tug on the heartstrings of players.
• Bungie says it will provide more information about its plans for the future next week.

On Monday news began surfacing that Bungie had begun axing a large number of employees across a multitude of departments. Reports suggest that as many as eight percent of the game developer’s staffing complement had been laid off.

Alongside these layoffs, reports also surfaced that Destiny 2’s final mainline expansion for the foreseeable future, The Final Shape, would be delayed by four months to June 2024. Furthermore, Bungie’s next release, Marathon, has also been delayed.

Aside from an ill-advised post on X by chief executive officer, Pete Parsons, Bungie hasn’t addressed the reports at all and many Destiny players were awaiting the weekly, This Week In Destiny blog for some sort of statement from the game makers.

On Thursday evening, Bungie issued a statement that wasn’t attributed to anybody on the team but the broader “Destiny 2 Dev Team”.

The full blog post is so short we’ve included it below.

This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our studio’s history, as we’ve parted ways with people we respect and admire. We’ve spent this week supporting one another, including those who are at the studio, as well as friends and colleagues who no longer are.

We want to acknowledge the feedback and concerns you have about Lightfall and recent Seasons, as well as your responses to the reveal of The Final Shape. We know we have lost a lot of your trust. Destiny needs to surprise and delight. We haven’t done this enough and that’s going to change.

To us the path forward is clear: We need to make The Final Shape an unforgettable Destiny experience. We want to build something that will be regarded alongside the best games we’ve ever made – a fitting culmination that honors the journey we’ve been on together for the past ten years. Forsaken, The Witch Queen, and The Taken King – these are the standard bearers we aim to live up to.

We are intensely focused on exceeding your expectations for The Final Shape. Destiny 2 has more than 650 dedicated teammates pouring all their energy and expertise into delivering this epic moment and its subsequent Episodes.

In the weeks ahead, you’ll be hearing more from us about what’s next on the short-term horizon, beginning with our next Season in late November. Afterwards, we’ll begin to unpack our team’s bigger, bolder, and brighter vision for The Final Shape, as well as the bridge we plan to build to take us all out of this Darkness and into the Light.

See you starside,

The Destiny 2 Dev Team.

Many within the Destiny community noted that there was no explicit mention of a delay for The Final Shape. However, reading between the lines we suspect that a delay is definitely on the cards given what we know about how Bungie develops content for Destiny 2.

If the game was scheduled for a February 2024 release, making “the Final Shape an unforgettable experience” likely means, it isn’t given that much of the blog outlines how disappointing Bungie’s work has been up until now.

What is lacking from this blog post is any sort of accountability from the management team at Bungie. This week reports surfaced that staffers pleaded with management to make changes that would enhance player retention only for those suggestions to allegedly be ignored by management.

Long-time players have for many months bemoaned how aggressive microtransactions have become within Destiny 2. Players need to purchase costly bundled offers in order to access all content in a given year or even past content.

Without actually addressing any of the controversies and issues that have swirled around the game for months and the layoffs this week, Bungie would have done well to simply have opted not to release the statement above. We understand that the firm had to say something but a simple post on social media stating that the firm was reflecting and would issue a response to all allegations and reports this week, would have sufficed.

Instead, Bungie has simply stoked the ire of its community, a community that has already begun moving against the developer. Many players have cancelled pre-orders of The Final Shape and others have turned their back on the game entirely.

The storm has arrived at Bungie and the statement above snapped like a cheap umbrella in a hurricane. Let’s hope the developer’s next update offers more than platitudes.