While Bungie currently seems to have its hands full with trying to make PvPvE extraction shooter Marathon more successful, a report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has indicated that the studio once had several projects in development. In a new video, Schreier said that the team was working on Destiny 2, Marathon, and other games for a total of “five or six” projects before the studio was acquired by Sony.
“As part of that acquisition, Bungie also had a whole bunch of other live service games in the works that Sony wanted to see come out in the subsequent years in addition to, of course, Destiny 2, which is Bungie’s big ongoing project,” he explained before going on to discuss how “most of those projects fell apart” over the course of time “for a variety of reasons”.
It is worth noting that, currently, Bungie is in quite a dire state, having been hit by layoffs back in June that involved 292 job cuts. Many of these developers had been working on Destiny 2 at the time, according to Sony’s Herman Hulst. Reports at the time had also indicated that studio head Justice Truman was stepping down.
In July, this would then be followed by the departure of Marathon’s game director, Joe Ziegler. The role has since been taken on by Del Chafe III, and Julia Nardin has been made the creative director on the title.
“Both of them have been operating in a strong leadership capacity for the team and are ready to guide Marathon into the next chapter with an even better and brighter future. As for me, I’ll be heading to something new, somewhere else, and will update you on where and what soon.”
As recently as last month, Bungie had continued to experiment with Marathon by bringing in the game’s first true PvE mode – Vault Breaker. The mode tasked players with heading into the Cryo Archive, where they would face UESC enemies. No other players are present for this game mode aside from the player’s own team. There are also options for Duos and Trios matchmaking, as well as a solo mode.
The studio is also currently working on Season 3 content for Marathon. Slated for launch on September 22nd, the season will bring revamps to Perimeter as well as a brand-new Runner Shell.
Marathon is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our thoughts on its PvE game mode, as well as our review from when the extraction shooter first came out.
As for Destiny 2, Bungie had announced that it was ending support for the shooter back in May. It got its final content update in June, and there are currently no confirmed plans for the franchise moving forward. Rumors had also indicated that, contrary to popular belief, there was no Destiny 3 in development at Bungie. In the meantime, however, Destiny and Destiny 2 are both still playable, and there don’t seem to be any plans to shut down the servers, at least for now.
