Bungie and Activision Break Up, And Bungie Keeps Destiny

In an abrupt and wholly welcome bit of news, Bungie has announced that they’ve broken up with Activision.

“With Activision, we created something special. To date, Destiny has delivered a combination of over 50 million games and expansions to players all around the world. More importantly, we’ve also witnessed a remarkable community – tens of millions of Guardians strong – rise up and embrace Destiny, to play together, to make and share memories, and even to do truly great things that reach far beyond the game we share, to deliver a positive impact on people’s everyday lives.

We have enjoyed a successful eight-year run and would like to thank Activision for their partnership on Destiny. Looking ahead, we’re excited to announce plans for Activision to transfer publishing rights for Destiny to Bungie. With our remarkable Destiny community, we are ready to publish on our own, while Activision will increase their focus on owned IP projects.”

This… this is a big deal. Bungie may have called the past eight years “successful,” but it was also a period when the company was on a pretty tight leash. Activision was no doubt behind some of the more suspicious decisions Destiny was forced to make, and it’s well-known they’re the ones who mandated yearly expansions that closely modeled the Call of Duty franchise Activision so heavily relies on.

And according to Kotaku, people within Bungie were so happy about the separation they were even popping champagne bottles when they were told internally.

Still, as far as the average gamer is concerned, transitions will happen slowly. For the time being, Destiny 2 will still be playable through the Blizzard launcher, but sooner or later they’ll move somewhere else… and I would bet hard cash they’re eyeballing the Epic Store as their next home.

As for other changes? Well… time will tell for those.

But there is one thing we know for sure: this is a very exciting time to be a Bungie fan.