Ex-Destiny And Halo Composer Marty O’Donnell Is Running For Congress As A Republican

In 2014, Marty O’Donnell was fired from Bungie, which came as a shock given that he was credited as the famed composer behind the iconic Halo theme, and much of the music for Bungie’s new game, Destiny. Now, after ten years and many other controversies later, O’Donnell has just announced that he’s running for congress as a Republican in Nevada, challenging a Democratic incumbent.

If you’re expecting to find a logical throughline from there to here, you won’t, and this comes as kind of a surprise to well, everyone. O’Donnell launched his campaign late on Sunday night with a Twitter Blue-length post about why he was running, which included a lot of traditional Republican language:

“The sad reality is that many children in our country are suffering. Years of ridiculing and demeaning old fashioned “family values” have taken a toll. Our society’s strength, fundamentally linked to the vitality of the family structure, has been eroded. I want to champion the traditional family as critical for a child’s development and success.”

This positioning does not seem to surprise many who have worked with O’Donnell, who again, has a long, rocky history with his ex-employer Bungie, fired in 2014 after many disputes over the use of the game’s music and audio workload on the game. He sued and won back vested shares of stock. Then he and fellow composer Michael Salvatori sued Microsoft in 2020 over unpaid music royalties, which they settled in 2022. In 2021, O’Donnell was found in contempt of court for sharing music from the first Destiny game which was in violation of the original lawsuit after his firing, and he had to pay $100,000 for that. So in short, no, you probably won’t see many cheering on his campaign over at Bungie.

As for his political leanings, following his Twitter account has offered more than enough clues. As his candidacy was announced, some have been recirculating some of his recent, hardline pro-Israel tweets about the war in Gaza:

In 2019 he was part of a right-wing movement to boycott Gillette when they ran a #MeToo-era ad about men pushing back on sexual harassment and bullying.

Does O’Donnell actually have a chance to win? It’s not impossible. If he won the Republican primary, he would face incumbent Democrat Susie Lee in a rather competitive district. Lee only won by four points over her Republican rival in 2022.

It’s been a mix of reactions to O’Donnell’s announcement. It feels like a split between those who know all O’Donnell’s backstory with Bungie and public statements and are upset or rolling their eyes about this, and those who just go “oh cool, the Halo composer!”

In an interview with Venturebeat it says “he hopes his own fame in gaming will help him.” Two paragraphs later, he states emphatically that he has voted for Trump twice and will vote for him a third time. The (bizarrely long and fluffy) Venturebeat profile also eventually gets to his stance on some issues which includes a lot of concerns about border control. The entire piece offers no elaboration about what the specifics of his “family values” and “traditional family” statements may imply.

So, for Bungie fans, this is a pretty weird development. But it is a competitive district and much stranger things have happened in politics the last decade in particular. Stay tuned, I suppose.

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