In a completely wild and unexpected move, Bungie, the creators of games such as Halo and Destiny has left their eight year partnership with Activision Blizzard and will be taking the rights to the Destiny IP with them.
In a blog post on Bungie.net, the Destiny development team talks about the break:
When we first launched our partnership with Activision in 2010, the gaming industry was in a pretty different place. As an independent studio setting out to build a brand new experience, we wanted a partner willing to take a big leap of faith with us. We had a vision for Destiny that we believed in, but to launch a game of that magnitude, we needed the support of an established publishing partner.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.
As someone who has always been a big fan of Halo, and someone who wants Destiny to be better than it is, this is like, the best news I could’ve gotten. Activision Blizzard and Bungie have had a notoriously rocky relationship, leading to things like releasing Destiny 2 earlier than wanted, or more recently the deeming of the popular and well received Forsaken expansion as a “failure.” Hopefully with the IP back in their hands, Bungie is able to really sit back and actually use the absurd amount of money Destiny has generated as a franchise smartly, and build off of the swathes of content they already have at their disposal. Even more hopefully, maybe this sort of move can become more common, and developers who ended up trapped by the whims of a pretty bad publisher can escape into the free and wild unknown.
