With the release of Destiny 2 Forsaken the online multiplayer shooter regained a large number of its player base. Guardians who abandoned Destiny 2 due to lack of content and shady monetizations returned for the latest DLC. Forsaken proved to be quite good and seems to have sold enough copies but Activision isn’t happy.
During its recent financials, Activision addressed investors and openly acknowledged the underwhelming performance of Destiny 2 Forsaken sales. The base game didn’t do too well while the previous DLCs are not even worth a mention by Activision’s market performance standards. Activision shared its view of Destiny 2 Forsaken sales but Bungie actually came out to defend its product.
Luke Smith from Bungie took to his official social media page and expressed his gratitude to everyone who bought Destiny 2. He made it clear that Bungie is not “disappointed” with Destiny 2 Forsaken sales and performance. But more interestingly, he promised that the studio will continue supporting the game in the future.
We are not disappointed with Forsaken. We set out to build a game that Destiny players would love, and at Bungie, we love it too.
Building Destiny for players who love it is and will remain our focus going forward.
Reportedly, tensions and disagreement between Bungie and Activision are nothing new. The problems have been there since prior to the release of Destiny 1. Developers wanted to prioritize hardcore gamers and develop a complete product. Activision, on the other hand, kept pushing for microtransactions and a lengthy DLC roadmap. If you remember, Destiny 1 was supposed to be a 10-year game. However, poor sales made Activision change course and create another installment.
Destiny 1 had the same issues as Destiny 2 – lack of content in the base game, microtransactions, servers issues, and a lengthy DLC roadmap. All of the content cut from the base game to release as DLC. Poor storyline and lack of in-game lore didn’t help matters.
Our recent major launches for World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Candy were all very successful and will set the stage for continued opportunities in 2019. Some of our other franchises, like Destiny, are not performing as well as we’d like, and we are working to accelerate the pace of live operations innovation and improve the speed with which we release new content to keep our players engaged and to provide new opportunities for monetization.
One can clearly see the differences between Bungie and Activision’s plans for Destiny 2 Forsaken after poor sales. The publisher promised more DLC for Destiny 2 to make up for lackluster performance. Meanwhile, Luke Smith and Bungie want to maintain the integrity of what Forsaken brought to the game and focus on gaining its player’s trust back. Since Activision is the publisher, it has the final say of what goes.
This begs the question, is it time for Bungie to part ways with Activision? The creator of some of the most popular Halo games needs to consider leaving Activision behind to protect its future and little goodwill that’s left.
