How Can Bungie Sustain Both ‘Destiny 2’ And ‘Marathon’ Going Forward?

The closer we get to The Final Shape, the more my opinions about the future of Bungie are starting to shift. I originally said that I was sure that Destiny 2 would continue making major expansions, not just the episodic season replacements that have already been announced, but now I’m becoming less and less sure.

Why? Because new findings seem to suggest things may be about to get a lot worse before (if) it gets better. A recent IGN report talked about how there is a tremendous weight on The Final Shape to perform, I would argue too much, given low preorders and player disillusionment over the past year. And if that is not the case, the threat of further layoffs looms. Over a hundred people were cut from Bungie in the fall of last year, and while we don’t know how deep cuts may go a second time, I am sorry to say that I have to imagine there may not be any avoiding further ones after The Final Shape. At least from the perspective of the (much-derided) Bungie leadership who decided to fire people the first time.

But my question is that with all these layoffs, how can Bungie possibly hope to sustain both Destiny 2 going forward, or even Destiny as an overall franchise, alongside the launch of Marathon, a big new shooter that is gambling a huge amount of the company’s fortunes on its success? That’s to say nothing of other projects that are still in incubation, albeit recent reports say ones like the codenamed “Gummy Bears” have been put on pause for now due to the issues at hand.

The situation seems at least somewhat similar to a company like Riot Games, which still manages longtime hit League of Legends, but also its shooter Valorant, plus smaller projects like Teamfight Tactics. If they can do it, can’t Bungie?

Riot has its own share of culture problems, so it is certainly not exempt from those Bungie-like struggles, plus recent layoffs that included 11% of the company, 500 jobs. But that’s the thing, 11% of Riot being 500 jobs means that the company is now around 4,500 employees. That is over four times the size of Bungie, which is now down closer to 1,000 employees after layoffs, and could be even smaller if further ones happen.

And while this is a bit apples and oranges, I would argue that managing a game like Destiny 2 is more “work” in some sense than League of Legends doing balance passes and pumping out individual new champions. Bungie has been cranking out huge expansions and increasingly large seasonal content over the last few years, alongside trying to also do “free” things like eternally balancing PvP, and now stopgap Into the Light content. It’s a massive amount of work at high cost.

The answer, unfortunately, may be that leadership simply doesn’t care how Bungie manages after the next year or two. The IGN report said leadership will likely leave in “droves” after their final payouts from the Sony deal come through in 2026, and it would be someone else’s problem after that as to how games like Destiny and Marathon are supported from there.

My main question for both these projects is scope. If the report is that Marathon is now a hero-based extraction shooter, how many of those arrive at launch (Valorant had 12, Overwatch had 21)? Then you get in a situation where, because this is now a hero game, you have to constantly add new characters, perhaps one a season, as no doubt Marathon will have seasons. That wouldn’t have been the case with custom characters.

Destiny feels like it almost has to shrink. Episodes may be larger than seasons, but I would still be surprised if three Episodes had as much total content as four seasons. And the question of expansions remains. On the one hand as the game’s biggest revenue drivers, you wonder how they could afford to lose them, on the other, are making those every 1.5 years sustainable at the same scale? I’m just not sure how that’s possible given all the other considerations here.

A main point is I really, really don’t think there should be more layoffs no matter what happens with The Final Shape as that would only damage the company’s future prospects even further with fewer people doing more work across two games now. But who knows what Bungie leadership is thinking these days. It mostly seems to be about themselves.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.