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The one-two punch of Sony reporting a further impairment loss from buying Bungie – now totaling $765 million in the last financial year, more than 21% of the $3.6 billion it spent on the studio – and Bungie itself admitting it still has nothing of note to say has sent Destiny 2 players deeper down the stages of grief.
On May 7, less than 24 hours before Sony released the earnings report revealing this staggering impairment loss, Destiny 2 communications manager dmg04 addressed the game's community on Twitter.
"Still have a few lighter TWIDs in the pipe," he says, setting expectations for the developer's weekly blog posts. For months, players have begged for updated details on Destiny 2's upcoming expansions and patches, not to mention a proper state of the game letter, but have seen very little of consequence. Clearly, such information won't be coming for at least several more weeks.
"Community focused, emblems and foundation details," dmg04 says of the coming blog posts. "Know y'all are chomping at the bit for news. Dotting i's, crossing t's. Looking to have game focused articles as soon as they're ready."
This is obviously out of the hands of people like dmg. The timing is just brutal, as the Destiny community could really use a pick-me-up, or even some clarity, in the wake of Sony's report.
Bungie has been on thin ice for a while, and with Sony very publicly quantifying its underperformance, fans of the studio's games fear the chilling depths have finally come. To be clear, the impairment loss means Bungie is now worth $765 million less than it was when Sony bought it, not that $765 million cash was lost through operational costs. But it's still very bad news, as this sort of loss wouldn't be tallied if Bungie's games were doing great.
Destiny 2's Edge of Fate expansion pushed many people away from the game with baffling systemic changes, and between Steam player counts and console analyst reports, it's clear that the MMO – Bungie's longtime breadwinner – is in the worst position it's ever been.
On top of that, Marathon finally got out the door – and ended up being really fun, per our Marathon review – only to start hemorrhaging players within a few weeks, evidently failing to maintain long-term appeal. Marathon is rapidly approaching a fork in the road with its first seasonal transition threatening to either turn off more people by wiping their progress or, just maybe, bring new and lapsed players into the fold with exciting changes.
In the wake of this news, Destiny 2 players are doing what they do best: doomposting.
"There's no way this game keeps getting DLC post 2026," reads a rising post on the main Destiny subreddit, which has also seen a falloff in user activity in the past year. A subreddit moderator sums up the discussion in another thread about the Sony news: "If this is the end, it's been an honor playing with you, ladies and gentlemen."
Even users on the more optimistic Destiny 2 subreddit have their heads in their hands: "It doesn't look good," reads today's top post, sharing The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley's aggregation of the Sony report.
With no word from Bungie and all visible numbers in the red, it's hard to dispute pessimism like this. Bungie has faced dire stakes and managed moonshot turnarounds multiple times before, but not as a Sony asset, and this situation really is something else.
What happens to Bungie going forward isn't entirely clear, but a feared shutdown, at least, does not seem imminent. There are many possibilities. Previous reports indicated the studio would face a total Sony takeover if it didn't hit financial targets. It's already been carved up to some extent, and with no turnaround in sight, it seems likely that Bungie's executive leadership will see some real musical chairs. Sony said just last year that Bungie's "independence is getting lighter," and the studio's only facing greater challenges today.
There are also understandable fears that the world-class artists, gunsmiths, audio wizards, and other developers at Bungie could face more cuts of their own, echoing multiple waves of prior layoffs that hit during hard times. And if you haven't heard, times have only gotten harder for the games industry at large.
Sony's live service ambitions, once meant to draw on Bungie's experience in the genre, have largely flamed out, so how PlayStation Studios could theoretically leverage the studio through partial reallocation is also more uncertain. Sony does seem invested in Marathon, but it's still a minor portion of Bungie's portfolio. Likewise, Sony surely wants the Destiny IP it paid for to survive, but in what shape and under what leadership? One thing seems certain: Bungie as we know it will not be allowed to continue on its current trajectory.
