Pete Parsons absolutely needs to step down, and I'm personally convinced he's been embezzling funds from the studio. How else do you burn through 3.6 BILLION in under 2 years?? Something fishy is going on with leadership at bungie
The final shape was incredible, but it didn’t feel like a proper send off to the original destiny story. In my opinion oryx was the original big bad of the Destiny universe until he was cucked by the witness. The original Destiny story should have ended in a big raid where we fight a resurrected oryx, savathuun, and xivu arath. Once all three are dead, THEN we find out who was behind them and that would have been the time to introduce the witness. It feels like bungie decided half way through that story that they wanted to go in a new direction. All I’m hoping is that in the next episodes, we fight xivu arath and at least finish that story. As it stands right now xivu has been built up for at least 4 years now and it’s looking like we might not ever see that story finish
i quit destiny when they deleted over $200 of content that i paid for, and was bullied by the community for calling out the obvious lie that they sold at the time which was "oh all this content will come back in the future". its been 5 years, where is the first first 3 years of content that i paid for? its an insult and a slap in the face to someone who was a fan of and loyal supporter of bungie since halo: ce.
I’m a Developer and has had same stuff happen to me at my Job. I can guarantee that a lot of Developers at Bungie are gonna move on to other pastures since they dunno when the next Layoffs are gonna happen. It’s sad and scary but it sucks to be at Work at 9am and one day get called into the Conference Room to find out you’ve been made redundant. Those remaining Devs are not gonna wait for that moment and bail before the Ship sinks.
Doubt it, they just got a new boss with deep pockets. Bungie has been dying for years now and i guarantee you that the people still working at bungie are just going through the motions enjoying the money they get while they can. If they cared about their job they wouldve cared about the game.
@@_AriseChickenyou can care about your job, that doesn’t mean the head honchos give a shit about it. They just want you to do what *they* want, not what you know is important
@@TheTorqueAholic the head honchos arent the ones making the game, bungie has showed us this time and time again. Hell even with the into the light event and the new game mode the devs showed on their stream, those were just devs. So yeah they dont give a flying fuck, theyre there for a paycheck.
@@_AriseChicken you have no clue how development works. look at concept art, cut content, etc. the devs have plenty of ideas, just not the proper allotment of resources to assist in bringing those ideas to light. sony spent a LOT of money on bungie. 3.6 billion on a studio with only one game that isnt even CS2 or valorant levels of popularity. thats gonna lead to a LOT of budget cuts, layoffs, etc. it was a big net loss in profits
CEO mismanages the company, and the workers lose their jobs as a result. The CEO either faces no repercussions or "resigns" with a fat paycheck. It's happened so many times and it will continue to happen until something in the industry changes. It's depressing and sad that employees are rewarded for their work with a pink slip because some bigwig can't get his head out of his own ass.
Well, the change to the industry you're looking for is the dissolving of capitalism. CEOs and extreme executive pay is inherent to capitalism. It'll never change
@@PurpletridentI’m sure the politicians that take over leadership positions in whatever alternate system proposed won’t do the exact same thing, mismanage country/commune/union/non-governmental-organization/etc. and then live in a gated neighborhood or leave the country and never face the consequences of their actions. It’s the sad nature of power and those who misuse it.
@@Purpletrident There is an easy solution. Make it so that all companies operate similar to costco. The CEO doesnt make more than a certain % over the lowest paid employee then also tie that to bonuses. If the CEO wants a bonus well everyone has to have one. Properly regulated capitalism is the best system we have access too. Its just currently companies are seen as "people" and can make donations and essentially buy out politicians to screw over the little guy. Gotta overturn citizens united so companies/corporations arent seen as people anymore.
@@valenten89 There is no "properly regulated capitalism." That's an oxymoron. The entire point of capitalism is to get rid of regulations. At some point in the pipeline, there will be exploitation. Costco employees may be paid well, but what about the people who actually supply costco? They're paid pennies.
Nothing will change because the population is too cowardly to do anything about it. These are symptoms of a society slowly crumbling as accountability is evaded on repeat for a century or more
A big reason of why Into The Light worked is that we all knew Final Shape was immediately after that. Without that big expansion to look forward to, I doubt many players will care as much
This. The player base would have left if final shape wasn't around the corner. I would have. It's weird that they can't see this. Maybe they can but now it's just too expensive to make proper DLCs. So they are using the sales shit as an excuse and trying to put the blame on players. "Oh we can't make cool shit anymore because not enough players bought it". Or or, maybe enough players did buy the DLC but not enough of them bough it to fund Pete Parsons car collection for the next 5 years.
Into the Light doesn't exist anymore, what remains is an activity gutted of the major features that made it good and effectively relegated to the side like Dares and Gambit on top of the other major activity just being outright removed.
I played destiny for 9 years straight, quit after lightfall campaign, came back for a little bit of Into the Light to get ready for Final Shape and even I WAS LOST. I can not imagine a new player trying to play the game at all in any way. I had so many seasonal quest things, basically no explanation on how anything worked.
I’m the same, been playing since destiny came out and played into destiny 2 until a year or two ago. Tried to return but couldn’t figure out wtf was going on and even then, it wasn’t fun unfortunately.
@@blakee4974 Yup same for me. I really wanted to see how it all ended, but it's just become this meta grind for hardcores and any criticism was always met with "you don't have to play it then". So I stopped. Never even finished the campaign. Truly sad because I can still clearly remember the pure joy D1 brought to me.
This is where Bungie messed up the most in my opinion. They are selling expansions as an enabler for the story, while using despairing seasons to tell the important story.
It's over. It's been a good run. That first week in D1 was just pure amazement and joy. It's been a wild ride since for sure. End of an era. It was an experience that will never be matched again.
@@TheFirstCurse1unfortunately i think you’re right. destiny was fucking incredible and destiny 2 was playing catch-up the entire remainder of the games life
@@NelsenGChess Yep. On release D2 was terrible. Bungie took 20 steps back, and then everyone loved Forsaken because it took 15 steps forward. Same thing with the content vault. People got so excited over vaulted content being added back when it never should have been taken away in the first place. It's so sad that people enabled this game.
@@TheFirstCurse1I’m pretty sure Destiny 1’s release was considered one of the biggest flops in gaming history at the time, and had to very slowly claw its way to being considered a good game by most. And even then it only just barely succeeded by the time Rise of Iron came out. I like both games, but let’s not act like the release of either game was smooth or successful. They were both horribly managed and bashed for years after their debuts.
@@fatcat2015yep. Just like with their philosophy of, "damn. Players have all these weapons now after the game has been out for some time. This means we gotta work even harder or figure out new ways, innovative ways, of keeping them around or making mew weapons." *sunsets weapons instead to artificially lengthen the life of their game and timegates content to artificially keep player base coming back to the game
Gotta be absolutely heartbreaking to have built your career, met your now wife, and many of your friends in this game and to have it come to this. I appreciate all of your work and the entertainment you have provided for 11 years. Cheers to you man
Hm sure but it's not like that's the identity of their personal relationships now. I met my wife on tinder and we've been happily together for 5 years lol, where you meet people means nothing, it's what you do afterwards that matters
This is kinda why being a youtuber sounds really unappealing to me. From Datto's perspective it seems really stressful, unpredictabke and time consuming. And if you get burned out or want to move away from one thing your channel will die
@@Bill-e-Goatthat's the thing you choose to make your problem? Even I got the class item, and 90% of the time I wasn't even using it. A mission isn't a problem. It's everything else.
My wife and son are my fireteam. I told them yesterday that we should really take this year to enjoy playing Destiny because it'll probably be the last. We're not continuing if the content in this game is echoes level content, the final shape dropoff has been insane.
@@reeltwig2929the epilogue episodes were supposed to be a step above seasons, and given the quality of the seasons of the prior cycle, they missed that mark, kind of hard.
Yeah this is absolutely NOT the time for Bungie to be secretive about the upcoming content. They need to give us a clear road map on what they are cooking from Frontiers and beyond, and they need to be transparent about what we can expect with that content.
So their whole reasoning for downsizing their staff was to focus on Destiny 2 and Marathon, yet now we’re getting even less content than what we were originally getting under 5 multitasked projects? Pete Parsons about to buy himself another Yacht bro stg
The whole reason for the layoffs is the actual top executives making stupid decisions and getting punished for it. Except instead of taking on that loss himself, he fires 34% of the studio after getting 3 billion dollars. Fuck Pete Parsons
Too right. See out the rest of the episodes (I guess? Who knows how much of that was done before recent events, and thus how much will be experienced by us) and then perfect timing for a sabbatical before figuring out what to do next.
When a media company lets go of their audio people, that's a red flag. As a professional audio engineer, I can tell you that means the suits are running the show and the artists aren't in control anymore.
Completely agree. its clear a ton of major AAA games put little to nothing into their games audio and its always the games that are obviously only being made to try and produce a profit and are being directed by some higher up that doesn't actually know what makes a good game. Bad audio is a great indicator of things going to shit.
@@yournamehere4562 yes the purpose is to make a profit of course but there is a difference between a game like Elden Ring and whatever the new Madden is or Call of Duty.
Saying "Company name here" Magic has the same energy as a Dragon Ball character pointing their thumb at themselves and then being forced into a crater double their size.
For decades people have continued to say the same thing about all big game series. "Halo killer, CoD killer, WoW killer, Destiny killer." But people need to understand that when games get large enough and have enough of a cult following, no other game has the power to kill it. WoW is the only WoW killer, CoD itself is the only CoD killer, and Destiny/Halo are obvious games that killed their own games. I roll my eyes every time I see, "Is this game the new X killer?"
Think like this. Destiny 2 became free to play, they didn’t give a crap about the new players. They even said they’re focused on the veterans. You can only squeeze the veterans so far 😹😹😹
they just took all of the soul out of the game man its honestly heart breaking as soon as the game started doing seasons we were cooked bruh ill never forgive fortnite for popularizing battlepasses
@@daniic5175 You're right, the seasons did ruin destiny. They started to focus on seasonal rather than core activities. And, honestly, I'd rather have a DLC a year than seasons. I don't even play them anymore.
@prismgames its crazy cause they started to focus on seasonal activities but a majority of the activities wasnt even fun the only seasons i really enjoyed were when subclass 3.0s dropped
Honestly pantheon was good ONLY if you had a set team. LFG was a nightmare for it. I came back from a two year break and have a very hard time finding a team willing to teach a raid.
pantheon wasnt made to be a raid teaching tool though, it was made as a challenge mode for endgame players, hence the difficulty increases and added mechanics. you shouldnt have been tryna learn the encounters during pantheon
Just got my friend to start playing. Without prompting him on our 2nd or 3rd night playing, he told me he would have quit 2 hrs in if I wasn't there. The onboarding is terrible. There are journey steps that literally contradict other quests, and if you don't know how to navigate the game, you'd never figure out how to proceed through. My friend plays EVE online, and he thought destiny was complicated.
Yeah I put my cousin on and he’s not as patient as I had to be in 2014. I doubt he’d be enjoying himself as much as he has been without me showing him the ropes.
People talked mad shit about it but The Red War campaign did what all campaigns should do, explain the game, its mechanics, and how activities fit into the world. Explained patrol zones, abilities, strikes, how story content works, everything a new player needs. That is now gone, new players have 0 structure to guide them into the game because there’s no base story for them to get into, only the newest story or a 2 year old story expansion that’s already been spoiled for them.
@@berrymax7907exactly! I hated the DCV with a passion. Throwing out all that only to replace it with a lackluster new player experience? When a F2P game needs constant new players to get started? Not to mention the context and motivation to keep going through all subsequent stories? If I wasn’t playing since D2 launch I would’ve been clueless and stopped playing in short order if I started playing post DCV. I also hate how Bungie doesn’t care about its own legacy and just scrapped so much content. Like this is your own baby and you just cut off limbs. Compare it to IOI and their World of Assassination reboot. When Hitman 2 came out previous players could play Hitman 2016 in the new game and when Hitman 3 came out Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 could be played in the latest game because they wanted the entire story arc to be playable instead of being relegated to the dustbin.
@@aarkwrite7240 In game development there's this saying that "You have to kill the baby early." To do away with the idea that a game is your baby, to not get too attached to concepts and ideas and that it WILL change and it will become something completely different by the end from what it was in the beginning. Sometimes bad shit happens and your game ends up being Destiny 2.
"Chasing Into The Light" kind of gives the "Chasing Menagerie" vibes from the seasonal model. They make something cool and think they can keep making it again and again. Unsure if that'll work this time
at least the seasonal model made sense because it built upon the story. now that there is no story to build upon, the new activities will either be boring, meaningless, or both.
And yet they never made something as good as the menagerie again. Which is really funny because it was made by a different studio which cast doubt at the time on if Bungie were even the best people to be working on destiny at all
@@bearismidthere are still potential stories left, the question is will anyone be interested enough to play them if they're anemic free updates instead of cinematic expansions
I played destiny 2 for several years straight. I stopped after beyond light and let me tell you, the breath of fresh air it was to take a permanent break from the game felt so damn liberating that i hope the devs who were laid off feel that and focus on new adventures.
@@cyrus6461even in warframe for skins most of them you could just sell stuff for plat to buy them! Also I kinda find it funny nexon of all companies there embarrassed shift up and bungie in the same yea lol
I love the D&D sets, but cost way too much for a cosmetic. Especially when I have serious doubts about not just how much longer I'll play the game, but it even existing much longer.
@@Welverin I really wanted to buy the Titan set for that, but I couldn't justify it with my wife (she wanted the displacer beast one, also couldn't justify that)
Regarding "The people who play the game can onboard their friends"...yeah, no. No they cannot. I tried. Many times, with many people. In most cases the content vaulting was the dealbreaker, especially The Red War. No one really loves FF14 for "A Realm Reborn", but it's what onboards new players, and it works.
Agreed, I've onboarded many a Tenno in Warframe, but that game doesn't have half its story (and most of its content) hidden away in some vault. D2 is just not the game for onboarding..
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx i got into a few months ago and while it's still a bit confusing, i can say that i follow along pretty well in comparison to destiny 2 (which i still don't 100% understand). i would suggest not doing the duviri intro, tho. i started with that and that confused THEE fuck out of me lol
Yep, I've bought the DLC for family & friends. Even gave them consoles. It didn't take long for them to become disenchanted and stop playing. The one thing they all agreed on was Bungie was in a league of their own when it came to sucking all the fun out of game. So not only did they stop playing Destiny, but they also want no part of any Bungie game in the future. That's what Marathon has to overcome and that's near impossible.
Its been 10years. Nothing lasts forever. Autumn has arrived in Destiny. The Elves have left middle earth. Winter will follow. Hope for spring. And in the meantime stock up on soup and blankets.
And yet there are games that have lasted way longer. The trully sad thing is that we do not have a good Destiny replacement. There are no looter shooter alternatives.
I just want to shout out Joe Blackburn and team really quickly. In the midst of this catastrophic mess, they decided to come together and create a banger of a final expansion, all while probably updating their resumés. A big thanks to them for at least letting us have a proper send-off.
The onboarding process is insane, my character is 9 years old, I took a break and skipped nightfall and coming back this weekend was like pulling teeth. I couldn't imagine how it must be for someone who hasn't been playing for the better part of a decade....especially a kid short on patience
The irony of of the situation kills me. Sony of all companies bought Bungie, the company that made the franchise that was likley the biggest thorn in their side back when they made Halo and was effectivly THE reason Xbox beat them for Years. And now, they are a thorn in their side again for the opposite reason immediately after they bought them. Datto's gonna get that sabbatical even if it kills Bungie.
Yeah makes you wonder if it would have been a smarter move for them to stay with Microsoft or at least consider rekindling the relationship they had in the early 2000s
Guys they probably tried to incorpate in Bungie properly, but the leadership at bungie has always been well known to be stubborn at best, and narrasistical at worse. Often described as ear deaf, would not be easy for Sony to try and get Destiny 2 to make a product that made revenue outside of micro transactions. I mean look at how much people like Luke Smith get paid. Doesn't leave much in the operating budget for other things in the company when they live a comfy life. Firing the Higher ups might be what's needed for Bungies heart and soul, lowest rung on the totem pole, the people who actually program the game. The people who often complained higher up would change updates at the last moment cause they some didn't like particular in game asset a certian way.
Honestly Sony can now incorpate many aspects of Destiny into other shooters and fantasy games and use proper budgets and properly managed teams to make higher tier products.
I see this as a win for the gaming development community. Along with, a personal lose to the gaming fans community. Due a decade of mismanagement we are about to lose Bungie, the OG Halo creators. I look to the current management of Bungie and point out, people expected you to do better with a company most of you got promoted up through.
To be honest, I don't even really know what you mean when you say that Xbox beat Sony for years. The PS2 drastically outsold the original Xbox, by a factor of like 6 to 1 (~150 mil vs. ~24 mil). Even the far less popular PS3 managed to sell about the same number of units as the 360; something like 87 mil lifetime sales for the PS3, and 86 mil for the 360. I'd be interested to know, what metric for general victory are you using here? If it's more of just a vibe check, that's fair; original Halo trilogy was definitely the dominant multiplayer FPS in America for years, and nobody really had an answer to it. But in terms of overall Xbox versus Sony, Microsoft has always severely underperformed.
I very clearly remember when the massive expansion plans for stuff like new studios and alternative projects were announced by Bungie. I also remember thinking it did not make sense how a company that had only one game actively making them money would be capable of that. Now, add the fact that they were already beginning to struggle with meeting the demand for content, in what world would Pete think “Let’s move away some of our talent for pet projects that won’t make any money” while teetering the line of being in the red. Also, not that I would really expect this from a public statement like this, but Pete Parson’s saying “We” and “Our” in reference to his mistakes while the ones who suffered his mistakes are the ones who had no say in it
portfolio inflation. make it seem like bungie is worth, or will be worth much more making it a seemingly good investment. now that pete has made his money and bought his cars he's out.
We still havent heard a single peep over their supposed Amsterdam Studio. I literally couldve gone with a construction crew and build one by now. I think its not even money, but ol Pete realizing hes gonna need to do layoffs. Fortunately for us, the Netherlands are a civilized countries and dont let you fire people on a whim, like that pregnant lady that was about to go into parental leave
In the realms of consumerism for sure. So many companies just blunder and mess up things that could be amazing and ruin it for everyone else. It’s predictable at this point. Dropped Destiny completely after TFS but when I heard all this news about Bungie I wasn’t surprised at all.
This is what happens when you nickel-and-dime your customer/fanbase for 10 years… It’s not the content, it is the little things over the years that just added up and gotten to much for most players. So even if your game is actually greater than it ever was, over time players just got tired of the constant grind that is still left in the game, and getting short chanced on every turn; like with bright dust, bright engrams item duplicates, silver, dlc expansions… The ever-verse store prices that are so ridiculously expensive it’s insulting and disgusting. Material upgrade cost of gear and weapons, the light levelling system that should have been retired/sunset long time ago… PVP and Gambit Maps that don’t even get a few much needed design changes to refresh them. The fun police that nerf’s everything we enjoy a little too much left right and center. The list goes on and on…sadly 🤬🤷🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
I remember hearing some people saying they were positive that Destiny 3 was coming and responding with "Then how do you explain them letting go of nearly all of their pre-production crew?". Now my sweet nieve summer child, here we are.
I’m honestly wondering what the Frontiers showcase/Reveal will be at this point. With everything going on I don’t even know how they’ll keep player interest or sell anything with this news.
As soon as I heard the CEO talk about how they will never “overdeliver” again, I decided to never buy another expansion, that dude and all of the games other leaders have ruined it
Sunsetting/vaulting and the lack of new player on boarding is insane. I struggle to think why that isn't a big reason sales kept declining. Why would anybody expect a new player to start playing when they need to buy all these expansions but don't get the story?
Sunsetting is a big portion of the reason why players have made a a slow pilgrimage out of destiny 2. Used to be top 5, now it barely tops 20, or even 50. There are many other reason, but sunsetting gear, was something I said "when bungie wants to make money they will bring back Cayde 6 and any sunset weapons." People said I was being pessimistic, I said a realistic.. anyways turns out tho even upsetting gear and bringing back cadye can’ save them. It will give them a fat paycheck as a severance package tho.
Feels like players have been investing their time and money for nothing if there’s no plans to continue making large scale stories in the same universe
When they went F2P they should of followed Warframe's model, allow players to earn silver in game since they don't have trading they could of done it via raids and dungeons, have support packs for upcoming chapters that give exclusive items, make the story stuff and raids and dungeons free for everyone, and fixed the damn new player experience, and made Eververse cheaper. more communication would of been nice, Dev streams for showing off what's coming or ideas they have to see how the player base reacts to it. i don't understand how you can bleed money and watch your competitor rake in the money and do nothing about it
i genuinely don’t understand how they could’ve fumbled THIS hard ESPECIALLY after an extremely successful expansion. Every time i’ve tried to fall back in love with Destiny 2, the company completely fucks it over for no reason. What a pathetic death one of my favorite games is experiencing, it’s like being in the room with a dying relative.
The biggest problem with destiny for a new player how many dlc they have to pay just to get full access to everything. Instead of doing all bundle 1 price.
@@elseggs6504 like eso just subscribe to eso + have access to everything except the latest dlc but will be eventually put on eso+ when the next dlc comes around
Im being dead serious when I think that if things keep going how they are going for bunie, they wont be a company in about 3-5 years if marathon flops. I hate for it to happen but it seems like that's how its going
I still to this day can't wrap my head around why the ever living fuck did they think making some tarkov trend chaser ass game was a good idea over pouring more resources into a game that many others have tried to copy but just can't capture the same vibe.
@@terminate_all far as I know no big or well known studio has made an extraction shooter. I trust bungie on the gameplay side of things. they always pull through and at least eventually and make something good. I don't know if it'll succeed but I'm sure they could be like the extraction shooter version of fortnite in that they weren't the first but they are what came to define the genre.
Hey Datto, I found your channel way back in the heyday of Destiny pre launch hype. I have not been a supper avid supporter over the years as I feel off the Destiny train around the time of D2 launch, but I have always appreciated being able to come back to your videos from time to time to get a very well researched level headed take on the current ongoings in the Destiney world. Also full disclosure I'm a huge ABowloFruit stan and it's always great when you pop up in extended dream team videos. Just wanted to say thanks for the years of quality content and I wish you the best of luck as you navigate this very strange time for Destiny and it's comunity.
Correction, People aren’t willing to buy any “big drop” expansions of recycled reskinned content. They’ve been doing it for 10 years so it’s no surprise there’s a decline on sales for them. I’m js
Because they're not making enough money to justify the cost. What's hard to believe? Revenue from expansion sales has to be enough to carry them to the next expansion and expansion sales go down with every release. TFS sold less than Lightfall. Employees need to be paid every week. They won't work 12-18 months for free to get a cut of expansion sales.
“How are they gonna make money” so, this is an interesting question. It wasn’t reported in the article, but Liz, an insider that correctly predicted this seasonal change, also said that on top of the (2) free seasons there will be 2 expansions every year, smaller in size compared to what we get now, which Bungie calls “content pack”, falling in line with the new terms they created for the “Forsaken Pack, Shadowkeep pack” and so on. These are presumably still paid, still contain a story and endgame activities. So we are still getting bigger content drops, but smaller and more frequent compared to annual expansions. It’s obviously far from being confirmed and we’ll get more details in the future, but this source was incredibly accurate yesterday and Jason just confirmed this, so it’s important to keep in mind. This is also likely what “Frontiers” really is, 2 smaller dlc focused on literally 2 frontiers (like, I don’t know, Torobatl or Riis or whatever).
Neomuna and having Nez terrorize it always felt more appropriate of a post light v dark saga location contained story than something that ever needed to happen when it did, let alone interrupt the saga so abruptly. Especially when there's decent enough evidence that what we got for Lightfall wasn't really supposed to exist in what was originally planned, I could buy a Neptune episode as our intro to it.
One of the sanest things Datto ever said was from Thoughts Going Into 2021, “innovation in Destiny cannot just be “more Destiny” “ . Minimum viable product going through the same motions that at best people just tolerate/put up with, is not going to work for any meaningful long haul and why this game has always been stuck from reaching a higher potential. Bungie pushing things half baked to address well after the fact isn’t sustainable either.
I stopped playing after witch queen for this reason. I just realized that Bungie doesn't have it in them to surprise or impress me anymore. They are terrified to move away from the design structure they established in 2014 for D1, and it is killing their game.
As someone who's stopped playing Destiny 2 a while ago, I'll give my 2 cents on the decision to drop expansions and how that actually plays into making "more money" rather than less. First off. from a development point, an expansion of that size will take a lot more resources and a bigger team to make. With them downsizing, and only releasing smaller sized batches of content, the overall cost of maintaining the game will decrease as well. Before they would need "2" teams, one that focuses on the patches/season content and one for the expansions. Now they will only need 1 team. Good for cost, in line with the downsizing, more agile and consistent. Maybe won't make as much money overall, but will also be bleeding far far less than before. This means lower operating cost and higher revenue overall (assuming on average, the same amount of player spend, not incl. expansions). And that's before we even talk about the other team's they had that bled them money on the side. Second point, for anyone that's dropped off the game, coming back is more often than not a pain. If you're even moderately invested, you need to get the new expansion, and potentially the ones you missed. That's a lot of upfront cost for catch-up. Many exotics and weapons are tied to specific expansions, so you kind of HAVE to buy them if you want to play it seriously. In my case, If I want to get back into D2, I currently need to buy 2 expansions for 80$. 130$ if I want to get the annual pass as well. As of this moment, this alone keeps me away from coming back (along with a few other annoyances). If I know there's no added costs to come back, and I can jump into the new stuff immediately, I'm more likely to come back and give it a shot. If it's good I'll stick around and if I'm having fun I'll even consider going back and buying whatever expansions/episodes I'm missing. Likewise, If I know I don't have to constantly buy passes/expansions, I'm more likely to drop some bucks on the Eververse since now I have "extra" disposable income that I otherwise didn't have. Third point, new player experience. For a new player, the entry cost is even higher and more confusing. Pivoting to a non-paid expansion/patches model, the onboarding cost will be lower on average (at least going forward and assuming no changes to old expasions). Yes, this can "theoretically" mean they make less money with no new expansions and passes, but on the flipside it means more people can get into it at no cost. Stickiness in this case is more important than initial spend. As long as you can get people in and enjoying the stuff, you'll be able to retain them better and if they're playing they're more likely to pay. Essentially you give people a better deal to get in, hoping for more money later down the line. For free-to-play games, generally, that's the best way to make money. Having a bad free-to-play experience is generally counter-intuitive and D2's F2P model and content range currently is terrible, especially if you compare it to the alternatives. TL/DR Overall, the switch makes sense. It reduces operating costs, it directly and indirectly increases revenue, it helps bring people back and makes it easier for new players to get into the action, keep them around, and turn them into spenders. Hope that helps and adds some insight.✌
Oh and one more point I forgot to mention. On the topic of expansions and MMOs. ACTUALLY one thing big MMOs like FFXIV and WoW do is that they BAKE IN older expansion into the base game. For WoW for example, if you pay a subscription (next month once TWW comes out) you will have access to everything in the game EXCEPT TWW, the latest expansion. That means you ONLY need to buy the new expansion and a sub to have access to the entire game. You can start playing almost everything at 13 a month, and only have to buy 1 expansion at 50. FFXIV, does the same, except it also has a super appealing Free-trial, where you can play all the content of the base game and the first 2 expansions. You need to "buy" the base game for 10 (which is technically free since it includes 1 month of game time) to move on from a free-trial, and you have access to everything except the latest expansion, and then fork 35 on the new expansion. Destiny does not do this. If you want to have access to all the content (ignoring the seasonal aspects and all that) you need 20 for Forsaken, 20 for Shadowkeep, 20 for Beyond Light, 25 for 30th anniversary, 30 for Witch queen, 30 for Lightfall and 50 for Final Shape, plus an extra 40 if you want the season passes. That's 170 if you ignore 30th anniversary pack and Season pass, or 235 with them included. (all prices in EUR)
I think we just need to chill and wait for the state of the game which usually comes out this month and see what direction they have planned a lot of articles are highlighting the doom and gloom but a change in format could be a good thing
I've said for a long time the new player experience is a huge problem. They are struggling to hold on to a dwindling player base. New players aren't getting invested to replace players that leave
Also want to add that the established player base will diminish even if the content is amazing. Life can change, work, family, or any number of other things. Attracting and KEEPING new players is vital for any game.
They should’ve made a second free campaign. Instead of wasting time on the Cosmodrome or player ranks which do nothing to help new players out, they desperately need a solid base structure that guides them through everything. My friend is trying to get back into it and talks about how shit the quest tab is, players have no clue what’s important and what they should be doing.
@@berrymax7907hey remember the red war? How it outlined everything to do in the game with a story that impacted everything, even if the writing was shit, and explained what the point of every faction was? Yeah they shouldn't have gotten rid of that.
People are just lazy and the game occupies a weird space where it is somewhat mainstream/casual friendly and somewhat complicated mmo. The game has only been getting easier for years and the gear grind is not nearly as bad as it was. It seems like an age thing bc 7yr old game idk.
It’s just weird that they were incubating all these different games of different genres and not one of them was Destiny 3. I’ve been pretty anti D3 but it’s just an odd choice since it's damn near impossible to get new people into the game and a fresh game launch is the perfect opportunity for new blood.
I find it interesting that all these incubated projects were never officially announced or mentioned. Only Marathon has been made official w/ a release date. Were these projects just side “jobs” that were being made when Destiny/Marathon weren’t being worked on? Were they only storyboard concepts, with rough code and a proof of concept coded out? Or were they fully developed, but held back because leadership didn’t approve of releasing more games? I don’t think we’ll have an answer sometime soon
@@ukemi- most studios that are capable of working on multiple games at once have these kinds of "incubation" projects. not this many unless your ubisoft or square enix but the thing with game dev is that how many games there are in the world is probably only 40% of what was concepted or developed. there are entire games that were made that were cancelled that we'll never know about. so much gets lost on the cutting room floor that you could make multiple games off cut concepts and ideas. and all off it is NDA and scrapped ideas and concepts. whatever these incubation projects were we'll never know unless a disgruntled ex bungie employee leaks what could have been that's just how the game development side of the industry is.
If nothing else shit like this makes me realize its a god damn miracle that games like CS and League are still around after so many years. Destiny is one of THE gaming franchises of all time to this day nobody has blended PVP and PVE into a first person game in the same way and certainly not accompanied with an extensive and well written unique universe alongside that. All of that amazing effort and work by so many talented people has been fucking squandered time and time again by money men who should never have their greedy fucking mitts on the creative process.
Bungie has a gold mine with D2. They should’ve kept all their focus on it and the possibilities could’ve been endless. But no they would rather do other things smh.
Well said, they could’ve made one of the best games on the market, but continuously made greedy or lazy decisions that held them back from their potential
@@sayarimamani3605 sure but the point is that games don't last this long. Destiny making it a decade seems like a fucking miracle especially when other mp franchises like Cod or battlefield certainly don't last as long
They went to chase the tarkov extraction trend instead of doubling down on their unique experience of a game that so many other games tried to copy but could never succeed..shit pisses me off.
I was hoping that we would hear that during Bungie’s main “hiatus”, there’d be a focus on bringing d1 and content Vault stuff back into the game while they formulate the future. But instead we just get “we don’t know, we aren’t making money, we’re gonna tone back development”. Just tells me there’s no reason to hold on anymore.
Re your comment about spending in Eververse, yeah I historically pretty much never bought or used Silver. But when TFS was delayed and layoffs happened, I started making purchases to try to support the game where I could. I figured I play 100s, nay 1,000s, of hours of this game, yet the game only gets my one-time-per-year payment of like $100 for the entire expansion cycle's content, and so maybe I should throw a few more dollars the developer's way.
“During one recent meeting, a company leader told attendees that sales of each expansion had declined year over year” Was it though? or did leaders mean it wasn’t enough to pay off debts and make a profit for the studio. WQ was a success and LF was at the beginning because of the hype from witch queen. That line smells shady
@@tomekk.1889 depends of what expectations? Were they expecting LF to be a dumpster of cash to cover other projects while maintaining themselves? Or some BS number Pete and leadership gave them based on Covid data.
@@tomekk.1889his point is what was the expectation. Did they expect to make enough to pay for more destiny or did they expect to make enough to pay for their bosses cars and 4 other games he wanted to use to inflate the companies "value" before he leaves.
@tomekk.1889 That was year end, though, wasn't it? I think Lightfall itself was a huge success in terms of pre-orders and concurrent players at launch. The expansion was just so poorly received that Bungie struggled to monetize the rest of the year.
Hard to say. There's more to lifetime sales than how high the player count is on day 1. LF had the peak playercount during day 1, but had such bad reception it probably sold very little beyond those who preordered. WQ was the opposite - expectations weren't massive but it was so good word of mouth resulted in more sales over time.
I stopped playing destiny years ago... i couldnt keep up the time required and i fell behind . I still watched and kept up with it when i could. Sad state its come to..
It was a good run, gang. Sometimes, it's better to just let something go, rather than cling to it as it dies. There have been a LOT of times where people joked about Destiny being dead. Something about this one though, right after what was supposed to be the culmination of all of it. I think it's finally over. I miss the days where I was just getting back in, learning about stasis, hearing the beautiful opening to Deep Stone Lullaby with my friends, every single one of us floored by it. We sat there at the end of the puzzle, looking out at Europa. All was well.
Biggest issue I have with content drops similar to 'into the light' is that the main reason, for me personally, for playing that style content was to prepare for THE BIG EXPANSIONS. That is what gave me a reason to get the new weapons, and play the new modes. Without the large DLC's to look forward to, I honestly don't know how they will keep players looking forward to something.
the smoother onboarding process is a huge one. i took a 2 year break from destiny 2 a while back, and when i did come back i didn't actually come back after i saw how much money i now how to spend in order to get the full experience.
For anyone who cares, the article is correct in its use of “myriad”. It is being used here as an adjective, meaning in this context, “myriad incubation projects” is the correct use of the term. “A myriad of” is not technically wrong either, but there was no need for the correction on Datto’s part. 😊
Beat me to the punch. But I don't think it's ever correct to say "a myriad of", and I think it's a mistake of language that carries on due to ignorance.
@@Soniti1324You’re just objectively wrong there. Not only has “myriad” been used as a noun for almost five centuries, but it wasn’t used as an adjective until over 140 years later. And in its *original* use, “a myriad” most literally meant “a ten thousand,” slotted between “a thousand” and “a million.”
These aren’t rumors Pete said there are going to smaller 6 month content drops rather than expansions we will have to see if they can cook but it’s joever for bigger expansions
Also, I played this game with my sons! My Grandson when he was 7 played with me. Great memories. So though I'm on SS, I bought $100 of silver and got D&D armor...really good. This game is great! Hope Bungie keeps working on it. Gonna pray they do!
I’ll definitely be interested to see where the Destiny streamers will move to seeing as their main source of content will now come to a stand still for the most part.
Once I completed Final Shape campaign, I couldn't bring myself to grind for anything - exotic class items included - or any further story beats... I think it's because I had no new big thing to prepare or be excited for.
Ya'll taking their comment seriously lmao, ya'll will take anything at face value instead of reading inbetween the lines. They're just sad a game and it's community they enjoyed is ending, it's not that deep. Peak youtube reading comprehension
i wonder if we could ever get a red war remastered, i would love to see a lot of it streamlined with a legendary campaign added, and all of it updated to onboard players to the current sandbox
My concern is the seeming shift away from story, the narrative team got absolutely gutted and if they're doing JUST into the light type updates, that had no story, like literally nothing. Story for me and many others is what keeps us around and if that's gone, I think I really am done
Here’s the easiest way I can really argue a case for where focus matters. I convinced over a dozen of my friends to come and try FFXIV over the course of the last year, and they had to get through ARR. I haven’t convinced a SINGLE friend to even TRY Destiny 2. New player experience is CRUCIAL to the game’s longevity and Bungie has basically ignored that since Forsaken.
To be honest, I feel worse than I did back in October when the first Bungie layoffs happened. Then, we were just hoping Final Shape delivered; now, I hoping we even have a game to play.
And let's face it, Marathon might be really good but in no way shape or form is going to generate the money execs or fans want. The fact is, looter shooters are a niche and Marathon is coming a little bit late to the party
Into the light, Pantheon and followed by the Final Shape was the best time in Destiny history ever. The quality of content was insane. I really hope we can get back to that one day.
22:07 the issue with this is, you're supporting the mismanagement if you feel like you want to buy something you don't really want. If they come out with something you want, then yes, support them. What I mean by this is, the market decides. Force them to make something that people want by not purchasing things you don't want, otherwise, they're just going to fail despite your efforts as a customer.
The market already decided. Sales were way below expectation, Bungie couldnt sustain its costs, so this is the consequence. There is no amount of sales drops or boycotts that will convince executives that they are the problem for trying to overextend their hand instead of being satisfied with sustaining a good a good product.
Into the Light was a flask of water in a barren desert. It came at a really good time for new content, which really amplified its reception and success; regardless of the quality of the content. I also read the move from paid expansions, to re-investing that dev time into more dungeon and raid content, and just selling more dungeon and raid keys. As always, good video, Datto. Lotta brain thinking to do as a result
I do NOT want an Increasingly Monetized, yet free Destiny, they need to move back to Annual Expansions and little to no seasonal content, that model has drained the life out of the game, its CONSTANT engagement and its causing extreme mass burnout. They are so focused on getting good player retention that they've forgotten to make the game good first and foremost. We need a dedicated focus on the Core Gameplay, Strikes, Crucible, Patrol, and even Gambit. We've been getting ONE SINGULAR STRIKE in the recent expansions, and while they have good story content, none of them until Final Shape have had a good destination with explorable content and secrets. Battlegrounds are not good replacement for Strikes. Somehow, someway Rise of Iron had better focus on what mattered than the last 3 DLC's. Drop Seasons, reduce Eververse, and return to form. Go back to the model of Taken King, Rise of Iron, Forsaken. They were easily the peak of Destiny. They gave us time off the game after we did all the content to go enjoy other things and come back with a fresh mind for the game. Also get rid of the management, we need competent people who can run a company without a burn rate that even Microsoft wont touch.
