Since Sony’s acquisition of Destiny 2 developer Bungie in 2022, the once-beloved game developer has failed to meet expectations. With numerous issues surrounding Destiny 2 following the release of The Final Shape, and the controversies surrounding Marathon, the studio may be in hot water.
In Sony’s latest financial report, the company recorded a 31.5 billion yen impairment charge due to Bungie’s failure to maintain expected revenue in Destiny 2. This approximately $204.2 million charge was enough to hit the profits of Sony’s Game & Network Services Segment.
In an investors call following the report, Sony chief financial officer Lin Tao explained that the issues facing Bungie’s MMO are “partially due to the changes in the competitive environment”. Tao explained that this has meant the “level of sales and user engagements have not reached the expectations” the company has when it acquired Bungie.
“While we will continue to make improvements, we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being, and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie,” the CFO told investors.
Since Sony’s acquisition of Bungie, the studio’s primary money maker, Destiny 2, has suffered immensely, but not just due to the so-called “competitive environment”. Following The Final Shape, which was seen as the ending of the original Destiny Light and Darkness storyline, many players have simply been left unhappy with the state of the game and its new content.
The Edge of Fate, the latest expansion for the MMO, was the start of the game’s Year of Prophecy, and the first step in the game’s future. However, the expansion landed like a lead balloon with fans leaving the game at an Overwhelmingly Negative reception on Steam.
With unsatisfying expansions and recent moves that essentially kill the social aspect of Bungie’s MMO in favour of easy-to-use menus to jump in and out of content, Destiny 2 has fallen to its lowest ever player count ever. While there are still dedicated players playing the MMO every day, the game’s player count has drastically fallen over the past year.
With no sign of a Destiny 3 anywhere on the horizon, which would allow Bungie to actually improve on the foundational flaws of the current game, it seems that the studio’s fate is resting on the success of Marathon. Following the game’s delay due to mass plagiarism, there’s worry that the game simply won’t be the mega hit that the studio needs, especially as Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders is currently taking up the spotlight for the extraction shooter genre.
It’s a very rough time for Bungie, and one that would spell doom for any other studio. However, despite Sony’s willingness to close down studios in the past, it seems that Bungie is still safe at the PlayStation company for now.
