Sigh.
When it looked like the worst industry-wide redundancies were behind us, Bungie decided that one round of layoffs wasn’t enough. Despite an initial cost-cutting exercise in October 2023, the studio decimated its ranks by a further 17% this past week.
Nothing I write here will be unique; it’s all been said a thousand times. But that doesn’t change our disappointment and anger whenever a new statement about a “difficult” decision breaks.
As always, I feel for the developers impacted. Imagine watching your colleagues get the axe In October and being told it was “all hands on deck” to deliver The Final Shape. The pressure of developing a quality finale ten years in the making, mixed with crunch and potential survivors’ guilt, is one hell of a cocktail.
Then picture—against all odds—sticking the landing and releasing an incredible expansion adored by fans and critics alike, only to be rewarded with being laid off weeks later.
By all accounts, Bungie has been mismanaged for years by an out-of-touch CEO who has no idea what he’s doing. Diversifying the Destiny IP isn’t a bad decision on the surface, but spending so much on research and development with the result being mass redundancies and nothing to show for it is what Drifter would call “fumbling the bag”.
I’ve previously written about my Destiny experience, questioning if I would continue my guardian’s journey after The Final Shape. I’m a casual player who was interested in the story more than completing difficult triumphs. Destiny was the perfect stopgap for me after Black Ops Cold War, but Black Ops 6 is on the horizon.
Truth be told, I uninstalled Destiny a few days before news of the layoffs hit. The Final Shape was a phenomenal experience—the perfect note for a player like me to end on.
There’s a lot of noise out there regarding the future of Destiny and how Bungie will scale future content down. Destiny expert Paul Tassi claims that the focus is on more minor expansions that should still have most of what players expect, albeit nowhere near the size of a Witch Queen or Final Shape expansion.
The status of a Destiny 2 successor is a whole other can of worms. While it’s clear a successor couldn’t be a Destiny 3 that starts from scratch, Bungie has lamented that the Destiny 2 game is bloated, complex, and full of wear and tear.
As soon as the Destiny Content Vault, which removed massive chunks of the Destiny 2 experience, including The Red War and Forsaken campaigns, was implemented, work should have started to ensure such a drastic measure would never be retaken. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more destinations and activities added to the vault shortly.
More Bad News
To make matters worse, Friday brought us the news that Game Informer would close its doors immediately—so immediately that many journalists didn’t even have time to back up their articles before the Game Informer website was nuked.
I’m from the UK, so I don’t have as strong a connection to Game Informer as a magazine as others, but it’s not lost on me how devastating it is that a 33-year-old institution is gone at the push of a button. I enjoyed the magazine’s online content, especially when it secured a deep dive into a game I was interested in.
The painful truth is that written video game media is a dying art. YouTube is king. Many online personalities I watch (Grubb/Minotti, Skill Up, Kinda Funny, to name a few) started in video game journalism before branching into content creation. Despite that, there is still a place in video game journalism for writing; it shouldn’t be left to rot. Rebekah Valentine at IGN has been wildly successful with some of her articles on studio conditions, including her coverage of Bungie following the October 2023 layoffs.
Unfortunately, breaking into the industry is tough. Opportunities are at a premium—freelancing is a rat race—and it gets increasingly difficult when more and more writers are without jobs and organisations like Game Informer close shop. And don’t get me started on trying to get a foot in the door of game development.
In a crooked way, I’m thankful for my tedious 9-to-5 job. I have stability and can write about whatever I want on Shutter Paw, even if only a few people are reading. There are no corporate mandates, pitches or deadlines; it’s a way that I can write without the stress of needing to put food on the table. Do I want a job that I wake up excited for in the future? Sure. Would I like to be part of a creative force? You bet. But for right now, with the unstable ground of the video game industry constantly reverberating, I’m comfortable enough.