Bungie ending its partnership with Activision and retaining the rights to the Destiny franchise is perhaps the biggest news we’ve had in the industry this entire year, and it’s one that’s prompted a lot of discussions, both retrospective and about the future. Among many other things, Activision’s disappointment with Forsaken’s commercial performance and Bungie’s insistence in response that they were happy with how the expansion had done was read by many as conflict between the two entities, which has led to many wondering whether publisher interference led to the developer wanting to break away and do things its own way.
And while suggestions that Activision’s decisions hampered both Bungie and Destiny are a dime a dozen, Bungie itself insists that the two shared an amicable relationship. In an interview with Eurogamer, Bungie’s communications director David Dague refuted the claims that Activision was “some prohibitive overlord” that would place unnecessary restrictions on the developer.
“I don’t know,” said Dague when asked if Bungie would have been allowed to release the free-to-play Destiny 2: New Light under Activision. “I think we need to dispel the notion Activision was some prohibitive overlord that wasn’t letting us do awesome things. We launched this franchise with Activision, naturally and over the course of time we both decided we had different goals for what we wanted it to be, so we both went our separate ways. It was amicable, and here we are making this game on our own, doing what we think we need to do to make it awesome.”
As for what’s ahead for Bungie and Destiny, beyond the aforementioned New Light, the looter shooter’s next big expansion, Shadowkeep, launches on October 1. There have also been some reports of late about the next Destiny title- read more on that through here.
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