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Developer Bungie Splits With Publisher Activision, Will Keep World Shooter Series Destiny (kotaku.com) 63

Posted by msmash from the moving-on dept.
Developer Bungie and publisher Activision are splitting up in an industry-shaking divorce that will see the shared world shooter series Destiny enter fully into Bungie's control. From a report: This development comes after years of tension between the two companies -- tension that has existed since before the first Destiny even shipped. Bungie, the studio that created and has led development on the franchise, told employees during a team meeting this afternoon, framing it as fantastic news for a studio that has long grown sick of dealing with its publisher. Employees cheered and popped champagne, according to one person who was there.

[...] One of the most significant tensions between Bungie and Activision had long been the annualized schedule, which mandated the release of a new Destiny game or expansion every fall. Now, separated from Activision, Bungie will no longer be constrained to that schedule. "We'll continue to deliver on the existing Destiny roadmap, and we're looking forward to releasing more seasonal experiences in the coming months," the company said, "as well as surprising our community with some exciting announcements about what lies beyond."
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Developer Bungie Splits With Publisher Activision, Will Keep World Shooter Series Destiny More

Developer Bungie Splits With Publisher Activision, Will Keep World Shooter Series Destiny

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  • Next? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by McFortner ( 881162 ) on Friday January 11, 2019 @12:49PM (#57945114)
    Can we get Blizzard split off next, please? Activision is too worried about new characters to fix the problems they have with the game as it is.
    • At least with Overwatch IMHO.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by meglon ( 1001833 )
      Shouldn't that saying actually be: Beware of gifts bearing Sales Reps.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bondsbw ( 888959 )

        The sentence is grammatically ambiguous. It can mean the same either way.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by meglon ( 1001833 )
          Well, no. It's a play off the old saying "beware of Greeks bearing gifts;" beware of the Greeks giving the gift. Restated to other way (which i used as a play on the original), "beware of gifts bearing Greeks" means to beware of a gift that has Greeks inside... like the trojan horse, which is what the original saying was founded on. In that instance, they were both good advice. So while we have to beware of sales reps giving gifts, we also have to beware of gifts concealing sales reps.... although they d
    • I would say that this is unlikely as Activision needs all of Blizzard's games. Without Blizzard, they only have Call of Duty as an active title. They have dead titles like Guitar Hero which they could ressurrect. Activision would likely fight against such a split.

    • Can we get Blizzard split off next, please? Activision is too worried about new characters to fix the problems they have with the game as it is.

      Blizzard, well Vivendi which owned Blizzard, bought Activision. Vivdendi was wise enough to have hands off Blizzard and wise enough to recognize "Activision" was a more well known brand than "Vivendi Games". So Vivendi's new company was named "Activision Blizzard". Blizzard is still largely autonomous of the Activision management that was retained and put in charge of the other Vivendi Games studios.

      Note how Blizzard is still on its decades old, it will ship when its ready schedule, and not tied to any s

      • Blizzard still has to answer to the quarterly shareholders meetings.

        Blizzard has just been less vocal about it.

        • Blizzard still has to answer to the quarterly shareholders meetings. Blizzard has just been less vocal about it.

          Its a short answer: "We are highly profitable. Talk to you in three months. Bye." :-)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            Heroes of the Storm flopped. Overwatch did not meet expectations. D3 was a disaster, though they made some money back with the expansion, it was still a damaged brand that was abandoned.

            Blizzard lost its autonomy as a result of successive flops, which is why everyone old-school has now left.
             

            • Heroes of the Storm flopped. Overwatch did not meet expectations. D3 was a disaster, though they made some money back with the expansion, it was still a damaged brand that was abandoned. Blizzard lost its autonomy as a result of successive flops, which is why everyone old-school has now left.

              Nope. According to the Q32018 financial report Blizzard had $1.5B in revenue for the first nine months of 2018. The rest of Activision combined had $1.8B in revenue. Blizzard alone is responsible for 46% of Activision Blizzard's revenue. Blizzard still has amazing employee retention and many 10 and 20 year veterans to this day.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by lgw ( 121541 )

                Doesn't matter in the least. They did not go as well as they were expected to do. That's all that matters.

                If you don't follow the industry, this is a common tactic for tearing down any studio that isn't a corporate puppet: just set the bar high enough that they fail, then corporatize them. But to be fair, in this case Blizzard has stumbled a few times, WoW is fading, and there's nothing they've done recently to show they can grow.

                • And yet your hypothesis remains untrue. Blizzard has not been corporatized, its still produces a high level of revenue, it still has a high degree of autonomy. Owners and investors are still in a mindset of don't f*ck with the most successful part of the company. As they were when Vivendi owned, as they were when CUC owned before that. Corporate ownership and stockholders is nothing new to Blizzard. Failed projects are nothing new to Blizzard. There were various games that were internally canceled. There we

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by lgw ( 121541 )

                    That makes no sense at all. If things aren't working, you change the big parts, not the small parts. And it doesn't matter how big they are, it matters how fast they grow. Activision has started outsourcing dev on Blizzard-branded products to chase growth.

                    • That makes no sense at all. If things aren't working, you change the big parts, not the small parts. And it doesn't matter how big they are, it matters how fast they grow. Activision has started outsourcing dev on Blizzard-branded products to chase growth.

                      You do not change the big part that is working, that is outproducing all the other parts.

                      Blizzard is seeking growth but not by abandoning its ways. It no longer has 3 main internal dev teams (RTS, Diablo, WoW), it has additional teams working on unannounced products. Plus some smaller teams on smaller products. Yet all of these are working on Blizzard's timeframes per Blizzard's values. They'll ship when their done, they'll get reworked or canceled if off track, they will not ship whatever they got when

            • Heroes of the Storm did not flop -- it's still well-maintained, and it's the eSports thing that flopped. Overwatch league has brought in nearly a billion dollars for Activision. Not my thing, particularly, but that's not chump change. I don't care if it's not LoL level either, it can exist as a success or failure on its own. That's also after the base game made a billion dollars in sales, which isn't too bad given it was built from the ruins of Titan, which they spent $150m on before they canned it.

              D3's lau

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by lgw ( 121541 )

                HOTS made far less money that expected. Overwatch made less money than expected. D3 made vastly less money than expected. Titan didn't even make it out the door. HOTS and D3 are parked in maintenance mode now.

                Most importantly: Blizzard didn't make the money that Fortnite made from the Battle Royale craze. Blizzard has not had a break-out success in years, and missed the giant break-out success every investor wishes they had.

        • Blizzard still has to answer to the quarterly shareholders meetings. Blizzard has just been less vocal about it.

          More seriously, shareholders are nothing new to Blizzard. They had them before when Vivendi owned, they had them before that when CUC owned.

          Blizzard's owners and their respective shareholders have always known Blizzard is "different". For God's sake they MISSED CHRISTMAS with Diablo 1 and it still went on to set industry sales records.

          Activision, Vivendi, and CUC shareholders get the same message. These are the revenues on our shipping games. We have additional unannounced games under development and

    • Bungie wasn't the cash cow that Blizzard is for Activision. Expect an extraordinarily high price if Blizzard was to split off.

    • Interesting bits of timing to note:

      Blizzard was a part of the Vivendi games group since 1998 according to their wikipedia page [wikipedia.org]. According to that same page, Activision Blizzard was formed by the merger of Vivendi and Activision in July, 2008.

      Wrath of the Lich King (the last Blizzard game or expansion to have a majority of old-time fans agree was at least "good" by long-time Blizzard standards) came out in November, 2008 [wikipedia.org].

      I have no other proof or evidence, but just from the timing of major events and quality

  • Finally free? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pfhorrest ( 545131 ) on Friday January 11, 2019 @12:52PM (#57945146) Homepage Journal

    I thought that when Bungie finally broke away from Microsoft, we might see a return to the old Bungie, from the days of Marathon and Myth.

    But then Destiny was... not that... and some people say that that's more Activision's fault than Bungie's.

    Maybe now that they're finally free and back to self-publishing like they always used to, before the dark times, before the acquisition, maybe now we'll finally see a return of the old Bungie?

    I'm not counting on it. The only person still around from the olden days is Jason. Even Robnar is gone now, and I can't even find where to.

    • Re:Finally free? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dostert ( 761476 ) on Friday January 11, 2019 @01:02PM (#57945240)

      I thought that when Bungie finally broke away from Microsoft, we might see a return to the old Bungie, from the days of Marathon and Myth.

      But then Destiny was... not that... and some people say that that's more Activision's fault than Bungie's.

      Maybe now that they're finally free and back to self-publishing like they always used to, before the dark times, before the acquisition, maybe now we'll finally see a return of the old Bungie?

      I'm not counting on it. The only person still around from the olden days is Jason. Even Robnar is gone now, and I can't even find where to.

      Marathon and Myth days were great. Things I remember most were the Letters to the Webmaster and the annual April Fools update to Pimps at Sea

    • Re:Finally free? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Snufu ( 1049644 ) on Friday January 11, 2019 @01:52PM (#57945586)

      The people who created Marathon, Myth, and Halo are long gone. Expect more of the same, just less often.

      • Bungie won't have Activision to "incentivize" them with a bonus of $x million if they sell N items by a certain date. That was supposedly the motivation for selling so many pieces of the game as DLC (which counted toward the "N items"), in the first year. Supposedly.

        What Bungie does with this new-found freedom is anyone's guess.
  • At least Bungie didn't make the third classic blunder, the first getting involved in a land war in Asia, the second being crossing a Sicilian in matters of death, both of which are only slightly more well known than: never get into bed with Sony Online Entertainment to publish your game. It's one thing to get Munson'd, it's another level entirely to get Sony'd. Admittedly though, Activision isn't all that much better....

  • What does a game publisher do? It's not like they have to put CDs in boxes and ship them to stores. Upload to steam and be done with it.

    • Depending on the size and state of the game dev studio a publisher may do one or more of the following:

      * Traditionally, Pay for all (or partial) development of the game
      * Traditionally, Marketing
      * Traditionally, Quality Assurance. Does the game dev have ALL the GPUs / phones / tablets released from the past 5+ years?
      * Traditionally, Localization
      * Helo define Alpha, Beta, and Gold states
      * Withhold milestone payments if deliverables haven't meet the goals
      * Contract out other developers to help (one dev team mi

  • Pitfall Harry and Pepperidge Farms remembers.

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