Bungie’s CEO just humiliated their own fans ( Destiny 2 + Marathon )
Have you ever heard of the ship of Thesus? It’s a
concept I bring up in some of my videos from time to time that sadly keeps ringing to be true. The
ship of Thesus is a theory that if every part of the original ship is replaced with new wood, new
sails, and more, would that new ship still be the same ship of Thesus? Or is it now something
else entirely despite having the same name? That’s Bungie. Hell, that’s Rock Steady. That’s a
lot of game studios, it seems, these days. Bungie is probably one of the saddest rises and falls
in gaming history for me because at their core, I have loved their games in the past, but it’s
become very clear that Bungie has lost sight of what they’re aiming for. And between their CEO
now running for the hills and the disaster that he has left behind for hundreds of his employees,
my question is, can and should Bungie even survive this mass exodus of both players and their talent?
In case you don’t know, quickly to catch you up, PlayStation bought Bungie a few years ago.
It was huge. Sony now owns the Halo people. That’s crazy. Well, not really. Since a lot of the
people who actually made Halo and Destiny aren’t really there anymore anyways. It’s as if Sony
bought Bungie thinking that they were getting the Marty O’Donnell version with the glitz and
the glamour and the prestige developers. Instead, Sony ended up buying basically the cover band
version of Marty and Bungie. and now they’re kind of left with a mess instead. Bungie hasn’t
been doing well is what I’m trying to say. And it’s become increasingly clear since they left
Activision and more while you know promising their fans they would be better as independent that
that was clearly not the case. Bungie frankly has never been worse and somehow since the final shape
release they’ve hit even lower lows. It’s actually kind of just sad to see but the cuts in the flesh
here they tell a different story. So, like I said, Sony bought them for billions of dollars. Then
their CEO, Pete Parsons, that’s this guy on screen here, who is pretty much universally hated
by everyone at Bungie for being a complete [ __ ] that tanked the company out of sheer greed. And
if you enjoy the content, consider doing the usual YouTube stuff from liking the video, subscribing,
leaving a comment. Thank you. But for example, in 2024 when Bungie laid off 220 employees, which
was a massive blow to their studio as key talents that were responsible for many of Bungie’s best
gameplay mechanics or the stories and whatnot were all let go during this billions of dollars
acquisition by Sony. But Pete Parsons, of course, during this spent, as you can see here, $2.4 4
million of his settlement that he got from Sony from those billions to instead buy classic cars
instead of, you know, protecting his employees cuz he frankly clearly anyways didn’t really
care at all. Pete Parsons was stripping Bungie for parts like a raider in Fallout, taking the
wheels and the engine for himself while leaving the people that he apparently cared for, you
know, in the car to just perish pretty much. And that 220 employees, that equated to roughly 17% of
Bungie’s, you know, entire being just being thrown into oblivion. But Pete Parsons remained. And like
the massive parasite that he is, he was sucking the blood out of Bungie without pause. And then
the House of Halo and Destiny and now Marathon 2 was slowly but surely getting weaker as time
went on. Eventually, in August 2025, Pete Parsons would finally announce via a Bungee post on their
website, as seen here, called Passing the Torch, that he was leaving the company behind, and that
a new lead would now be put in his place, whose name is Justin Truman. Although, weirdly enough,
the position that this Justin guy would fulfill would not be CEO. It was actually instead called
the studio head. Well, that’s kind of weird, isn’t it? I mean, what’s the difference? Turns
out Bungie had been failing so horribly for so long that Sony PlayStation had to swoop in and
essentially assume the role of being CEO for Bungie instead. So technically right now, as of
this video being made anyways, there really is no CEO of Bungie really at all. Justin is the studio
head, but he answers to Sony PlayStation directly now. So gone are the promises that Bungie would
still be independent under Sony, mostly because they mismanaged their money, their time, and their
talent so poorly that Sony had to step in like a strict parent and reign in Bungie as a whole. It
was a terrible shift because now not only did Pete Parsons leave Bungie with his, you know, millions
of dollars in bag that he got from the billions that he sold the studio to Sony for, not only was
the studio worse for Pete Parsons just existing at Bungie doing what he did, but now he got to leave
Scott free and instead just let someone else deal with the problem that he helped create over years
of mismanagement, greed, and honestly stupidity. Yeah, Pete won in the end. He stripped Bungie for
everything that he wanted. And now he got to walk into the sunset. His bank account full with a big
smile as everyone he screwed over was left with the mess that he helped create. There really is
no justice in this world sometimes. So what has Bungie done since Pete left? Well, they kind of
just ruined Destiny even further, actually. Look, I stopped playing Destiny after Final Shape. And
to be honest with you, Destiny 2 was probably my most played game of all time. But it became very
clear that anything that was releasing post that final shape expansion was going to be some weird
not really Bungie experience anymore. And sadly, I was right cuz Destiny’s newest expansion, which
was Edge of Fate, as seen here on Open Critic, it bombed with only 22% of critics actually
recommending that expansion to play. The actual player base sentiment has been even worse. All
over social media and YouTube is disgruntled Destiny content creators voicing their concerns
on how Bungie has ruined a once amazing game. And frankly, I don’t blame them. Look, I think that
Destiny 2 had the potential to be the greatest game ever made. It is easily the most limitless
and frankly interesting universe that has been made in Western game design in a very, very long
time. Yet, it has been completely ruined and torn apart by greedy CEOs and activists that
are pushing for gender ideology over making their game fun first and just a complete lack of
understanding of what their community and their player base wants. I mean, I’ve cut ties with
Bungie pretty much entirely at this point. Hell, their community manager has me blocked on
Twitter despite never talking to him even once, which already tells me he’s one of those types of
community managers. And Bungie quite literally, I mean, let’s just say it, okay? They kind
of went woke and went broke in record time, if you will. And a once incredible game has
instead been reduced to catering to gender ideology and girl bosses, while the player base
runs away in mass exodus as everything they’ve built crumbles. You see, Destiny and Destiny 2,
they used to be these games about the gameplay, the universe, and the co-op fun with your friends.
Man, I’ve had so many great memories playing those games. Then a weird turn just kind of happened
and suddenly Bungie became far more interested in telling fans how every main character was either
this gender or this instead while ignoring the actual problems that needed fixing. Like didn’t
you know that Sane 14 and Osiris, this robot and this old guy on screen are in a gay relationship?
Isn’t it amazing how they kissed in an animated cutscene as you can see right here? Oh, what’s
that? Make the game more fun. Oh, stop being a bigot and consume the slop, you evil consumer.
How dare you? Didn’t you know that Anna Bray, this chick on screen here, is gay, too? Isn’t that
amazing? What? What’s that? Stop overmonetizing the game and releasing buggy products. You know
what? How about you stop being a right-wing yatsi? You ever thought about that one, huh?
I mean, I could keep giving you examples, but I’m not kidding you. did like well over half
of the cast of this game is some sort of gender mixture of ideology nonsense which adds frankly
nothing to the story while the actual systems of Destiny are just crumbling around it instead. And
I’m not kidding either. As seen here from Forbes, Destiny 2 has sunset 80% of the entire game thanks
to the Portal. So in case you don’t know, okay, the Portal is this new hub, if you will, for all
of Destiny’s content. It replaced the director, which was basically the same thing. But anyways,
you can access its PvE or PvP stuff and so on from this one spot. So, in theory, it’s supposed
to make things better, but it hasn’t. Cuz now with this portal feature launched, as Forb said,
80% of Destiny 2’s available content has become pretty much pointless. Because the only things
that actually progress you further in power, you know, the thing you chase via your loot and
such to get stronger in this game, which is the whole reason why you’re playing it, only now comes
from either the new location, which is Kepler, or whatever the portal deems as worthy during
that week. As Forb says here, this means all old campaigns, destinations, playlists, dungeons,
and raids do not play into the system at all. You can run them for old gear, gear which cannot be
converted or upgraded into the new system. The playlist vendors, for instance, do not even have
a reward track anymore. The relatively recent, well-liked Pathfinder system was deleted entirely.
Grandmaster Strikes don’t exist at all anymore, and they continue. This is without exaggeration
at least 80% of the existing playable content in Destiny 2. And I don’t think that’s an
exaggeration. So, the fix is apparently that Bungie will reintroduce older content and weapons
with arbitrarily higher stat roles and numbers. Wow, great. Thanks. So, like always, Bungie has
learned absolutely nothing again and will instead just keep players on a hamster wheel that they
need to run over and over again to keep current in the game. and they will just have recycled
older weapons and content become useless only to then make them grind for the same weapons
again in just six months when another season or whatever else drops to keep their power up so
that they’re relevant. So no wonder, you know, Destiny and Bungie by association is falling apart
right now. It actually makes total sense why Pete Parsons just took his money and ran cuz this is
without a doubt a sinking ship. Like, you know, it’s bad when PC Gamer is releasing articles
with very positive titles like this one here. I have never known a Destiny 2 expansion with as
many problems as Edge of Fate, and I’m worried the game may not survive them. Ah, yes. What a ray
of positivity there, PC Gamer. But they’re right. Destiny 2, it needs a complete overhaul. But it’s
usually impossible to do that when games like this are so set in their ways. And PC Gamer, which gave
Edge of Fate a scathing 54% out of a 100 reviews, said this about it, which also reads, “Somehow
Bungie has taken the worst elements of multiple live service grinds and combined them into
something nonsensical that feels terrible to interact with. If that wasn’t bad enough, Edge of
Fate had so many bugs and errors that it led to things like as seen here that Bungie actually they
they accidentally released armor into the game that made players fully invisible, which is kind
of a big deal when big parts of your game involve, I don’t know, player versus player content. If
nobody can see someone cuz of Bungie screwing up for the millionth time, yeah, that’s probably a
bad thing. Some of the more current issues with Destiny 2, as also seen here, involves tons
of soft locking stuff, which ruins gameplay, missions not rewarding anything of value, raid
banners just don’t work anymore, campaigns failing to give rewards and weekly missions for getting to
also reward you. I mean, it just keeps going, man. How does a studio that apparently made Halo become
what it is today? Well, a simple Google search will solve that, as also seen here. In 2021,
Bungie went full-blown crazy with things like DEI. Then they hired a bunch of people who clearly were
not qualified for the job. They even at one point had a DEI officer in department and that made
sure that people had equitable hiring practices, which in theory may sound good, but with most DEI
nonsense, it’s pretty much just a smoke screen. That really means that we’re hiring people on
things like skin color or gender over, you know, talent or experience. Of course, I’m not saying
if you’re not white, you can’t work at Bungie. Of course you can. But can we at least be hiring
people who are amazing at what they do as well and not think if they just hit an arbitrary DEI
initiative number or something that that’s enough to get hired? Cuz if you ask me, it’s actually
more racist that Bungie would hire someone based on race than talent anyways. Cuz it’s just showing
that Bungie and other studios like them actually only see their employees for their physical traits
alone and not what they can do, which if you ask me, that is actually even worse than what they
had before. But Bungie would eventually nuke these DI initiatives about a year or so ago. But
the effects can, you know, still be felt clearly to this day cuz amidst those mass layoffs, they
also, like I said, got rid of talented developers, too, that genuinely deserve to be there. One of
the high-profile layoffs was Luke Smith. That’s this guy here, who was the director of many of
Destiny’s best expansions and then some. And another major layoff was Mark Noseworthy. That’s
this guy in the white t-shirt. He was the vice president of Destiny as a franchise and he was key
to ensuring that the franchise was in a good and healthy position. How do you fire the guy who’s
in charge of the franchise that had all these amazing hits behind it? Like in case you don’t
know, okay, as like people who play Destiny that are watching this, they know that both these guys
I just mentioned, they led Destiny for years. How did they get laid off? Yet, you clearly then kept
other people who were not nearly as qualified. And now look at what’s happening to Bungie. My
little conspiracy theory is that probably Pete Parson specifically targeted these guys to be
let go cuz them being there was likely a threat to his reign. But it was all pointless anyways
cuz now with Pete, Luke, Mark, and more all gone, Bungie’s just left to pick up the pieces while
their leaders, both good and bad, are just out the door. Like go look at Marathon. That game is
a mess, too. Another mistake of game development that has had nothing but terrible controversy over
controversy for years. Remember when Marathon got caught stealing art assets more than once? Or
how Bungie had a secret content creator play test like a few years ago? And then not a single
one of those content creators said that they would play Marathon if it was released tomorrow. Like
that’s a big yikes to. But Marathon’s just another ticking time bomb for Bungie because they’ve
invested so much into it already. And it just seems like no one who has played it is excited for
it at all. Frankly, at this point, Marathon seems dead on arrival in its current state. and likely
when it does release and falters and probably becomes yet another Concord if I’m being honest.
It’s also bad that Marathon will cost actual money to play as of now anyways when it should be free
to play at the very least if Bungie wants any chance of their extraction shooter surviving its
release window. I mean based on player reactions and more marathon is just a barebone version
of Destiny 2’s like patrol zones and that’s just pretty much being sprinkled with some PvP
content and they’re calling it a day. It’s frankly not unique enough as of now to warrant its own
experience. Sure, it has an interesting art style that it allegedly stole completely during that
huge art controversy, but Marathon is frankly just cooked even before it releases now. And all of
this was okayed and signed off by Pete Parsons to by the way. So, it’s even more frustrating knowing
that this XCO guy, he pretty much just said make all of these bad mistakes to these franchises
and then spend millions and then he’s like, “Okay guys, peace.” And then he leaves. Now,
you can also feel resentment through the screen from ex Bungie employees when Pete Parsons left
with his golden parachute. As Griffin Bennett, a former Bungie worker, said this via Twitter when
Pete left. Vested, stock cleared, damage done, but hey, we’re all family, right, Pete? Oh yeah,
the people at Bungie, they hated Pete for sure. But here’s more comments of people saying, “You
should hate Pete more.” Or joking which vintage car he’ll buy next with his payout bonus. Like,
look at this exchange between that Griffin guy and some users. I think it’s time to move on. He made
us all have to. It takes a villain to run an IP like Destiny into the ground. If only companies
had elected officials they could remove like villages. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely
hated Pete Parsons. All right. But what can you do about this when most of AAA western video games
is just full of like a dozen Pete Parsons that are all running these companies into the ground like
this out of greed alone. Nintendo, for example, is pushing for expensive games, slicing the content
from their own games to sell them back to players for more money in DLC when these games release
like Pokémon. Sony has completely lost the plot. It has released multiple agenda-driven video games
that don’t sell as well as previous games. Look at Spider-Man 2 and more. And they’re now pushing
for more live service slop and have canceled more games inhouse than they have released during
the entirety of the PS5 generation. when you compare it to any other PlayStation generation
in the past. And then Bungie, which was once the home of the premier shooting experience,
has now been overrun with activists, greedy, outofouch weirdos, and has gone from being a
part of Microsoft to being independent to joining Activision to being independent again to now being
bought by Sony, the competitors of Microsoft. And they’re now cratering financially and critically,
and really, let’s be real, only existed all at this point due to the lifeline that has been
given to them by Sony PlayStation. If Bungie were independent during all of these layoffs and more,
especially this Edge of Fate release, which has been nothing short of disastrous, and would have
honestly ruined and closed other studios already, what hope does Bungie have or really many of
these AAA studios these days anymore? Like, the rod has hollowed out the corpses of these
companies so much they’re just zombies at this point. The fact that you can buy something
like Silkong for the price of a single armor bundle in Destiny. How is that okay? How is that
even justified? And when you look at Bungie’s catalog now between Destiny 2 and Marathon, on
paper anyways, they should be doing amazing. You have an exceptional science fiction
universe that could expand in so many ways, but instead it’s just being held back. It’s being
ruined by greed, stupidity, and EI still. And the same things that have ruined other studios already
from Valition with Saints Row to Rock Steady and even smaller ones like Mimi Games is seen here
with Shadow Gambit where they had to close down the entire studio after their Sweet Baby Inc.
game ruined their financials. I wonder why. So, look, the point here is that Bungie should be a
cautionary tale for the entire industry of how a studio that was once so prestigious that used to
be a rockstar level qualitywise back in the day has now been reduced to what it is today due to a
myriad of bad decisions. When Destiny 1 came out, dude, Bungie was on top of the world. Like, no
one thought that they could outdo Halo 3 or even Reach. I mean, those were some of the greatest
firstperson shooters ever crafted, especially when they came out. But then Destiny 1 comes out
and despite its issues and development hell woes, it was a roaring success. If you don’t remember,
as seen here, Destiny 1 made an eye watering $500 million in revenue within 24 hours of launch
back in 2014. That’s 11 years ago only. So at this point, it was the biggest launch for a video game
and new IP in history and solidify Destiny and Bungie as one of the greatest western studios
of its time. comparing the hype, the goodwill, and the talent that was directly connected from
the Halo days to Destiny there, Marty O’Donald included, and then compare it to what it is now.
You can’t. It’s impossible. Sony lost money buying Bungie for 3 billion or whatever it was somewhere
around there if I remember correctly. But anyway, they bought Bungie believing that they were
getting the Bungie that made Destiny 1 and Halo, but they instead got the Bungie that made
Edge of Fate and I guess Renegades instead, which is like a Star Wars themed expansion
that’s coming to Destiny soon as well, just creatively bankrupt if you ask me. But AAA Gaming
obviously has learned next to nothing despite being surrounded by examples of how to not do your
franchises and your fan base wrong, yet they keep doing it anyways. It’s very eye opening to realize
how the story of Bungie and how they ruin their core franchises correlates with the downfall
of their studio as a whole, too. Pete Parsons may have been instrumental in ruining Bungie.
That is absolutely 100% abundantly clear. But when you have people in power now like the studio
head who infamously said overd delivering is bad for business while routinely underdelivering which
then leads to profits failing and developers being thrown away like sacrificial lambs. I’m sorry but
I don’t see Bungie recovering from this anytime soon. Maybe one day they could turn things around.
Maybe that’s being optimistic. But apparently they also cancelled Destiny 3 already which was cenamed
Payback just a few months ago. That was probably the only thing that could have maybe turned this
around, which was a fresh slate with the new Destiny game from Bungie. Something to hopefully
replicate the release of Destiny 1 in 2014 again. But live service development has Bungie devs
on these hamster wheels, and it’s seemingly impossible to get off of now. They’d have to
pretty much just shut down Destiny 2 development and marathon to focus solely on Destiny 3. But
they’ll never do that cuz Sony won’t let them, especially not after spending what they did on
them in the first place. But besides a Destiny 3, I really don’t see things, you know, getting fixed
here. Maybe with the whole Destiny Rising thing, if it does well enough, they can take that team
and expand it and then they can make a Destiny 3 instead. That could actually be an avenue for
good. But let the story of current Bungie and its failures be known that even the greatest studios
can fall and become shadows of themselves. I feel for the people who made Destiny and whatnot into
what it is. It must be really frustrating as hell to see what has happened happened. And I don’t
hate Bungie or want anyone to boycott them, even if again their community manager blocked me. But
one look at that guy tells me everything I need to know about him either way. But look, Bungie is the
quintessential ship of Thesius in action. It is now Bungie and name only at this point. And unless
something really changes, I frankly don’t see Bungie even existing in 10 years time. But that’s
what happens with ideology, gender nonsense, and corporate grief that stifles any way that
your studio can even survive these days. But what do you guys think? Is Bungie done? Can they even
turn things around? Would you even be confident in investing in a Destiny 3 if it happened or even
playing Destiny 2 right now as an option? Let me know in the comments. As always, thank you for
watching. Subscribe and I’ll see you next time.
How did something so good get so bad?
#sweetbabyinc #destiny2 #marathon #palworld #nintendo #pokemon #nintendoswitch2 #steam #valve #gaming #gamingnews
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