- Bungie has revealed in a court filing that the content Destiny 2 launched with in 2017 is no longer available in any playable form.
- This as the game’s systems have evolved to a point where that content is simply no longer compatible with the existing infrastructure.
- This includes the Red War campaign and the Raid content centred around the Leviathan.
The Destiny 2 Red War campaign, the campaign that players engaged with at the launch of the game in 2017, is lost forever according to court filings.
The campaign was removed from the game in 2020 as part of an effort to reduce the size of the game on systems and also retire legacy systems in the game to make way for something new. At the time, players were told that this content may return in future, but as far as the Red War (or vanilla campaign as players refer to it) is concerned, it won’t ever return.
This revelation was made in court filings as part of an ongoing copyright lawsuit launched by writer Matthew Kelsey Martineau. The writer alleges that Bungie copied elements of an unpublished story in creating the Red War storyline and the Red Legion faction within the game.
However, Bungie’s legal team have crafted a defence that we didn’t expect – Martineau’s legal challenge isn’t based on anything in the game but rather “fan-made derivative works created by third parties”.
The argument is that because the Red War campaign is no longer in the game, the writer has had to lean on fan-made content to fuel his challenge. This, Bungie argues, is problematic as it’s not content that is in the game. In fact, it had head of engineering at Bungie, David Aldridge state under oath that not only was the campaign removed from the game, it no longer exists in any playable form at the company.
As reported by The Game Post Bungie’s head of engineering reportedly explained that the rate at which Destiny’s underlying systems have evolved mean that the Red War content is no longer compatible with the game.
“In November 2020, the original ‘Red War’ campaign was retired from Destiny 2, such that it was, and remains, no longer accessible,” explained Alridge. “Before this suit, Bungie archived the original code that comprised the ‘Red War’ campaign (known as a ‘legacy build’). However, the ‘Red War’ legacy build can no longer run because its outdated code is incompatible with Destiny 2’s evolved underlying operational framework, which has evolved considerably since the ‘Red War’ campaign was retired.”
The Bungie head of engineering states that the developer cannot provide the court with the game as it existed in 2017 – as requested by Martineau – because it doesn’t exist. As such, the developer reckons the judge should toss this matter
This is also a blow to players who held out hope that this content might one day return. The Red War included a raft of Raid content centred around the Leviathan which is now lost to the annals of time.
In addition to the defence that the content no longer exists, Bungie also argues that merely using words that are similar to those used by Martineau don’t amount to copyright infringement.
We have to give Bungie’s legal team some praise here, this is a clever legal argument. How can somebody sue you over something that no longer exists right? Of course, there is evidence that the content did exist at some point and we wonder how a judge will approach that as this legal challenge moves forward.
For players though, the news that the content from the Red War and Leviathan will never return stings. While we do believe that Destiny 2 is better off since content was removed and new systems could be implemented, we do miss that old content.
On that note, we should point out that the Red War campaign and Leviathan content have now been out of Destiny 2 longer than they were in Destiny 2.
