Ex-Bungie exec speaks out on leaving Microsoft for Activision; "bad from the start”

Ex-Bungie Executive and composer Marty O’Donnell has spoken out on the beloved developer’s deal with Activision for the Destiny franchise. 

Speaking to YouTube channel HiddenXperia, O’Donnell explained that the only reason Bungie settled with signing to Activision was to keep the rights to the Destiny IP, something that other publishers (Microsoft included) would not agree to.

O’Donnell says that Bungie executives were wary of the deal as soon as they had signed up with the Call of Duty publisher.

“If there’s any blame for going to Activision, I’m a part of it. We knew it was a risk right from the get go and then it turned out to be exactly as bad as we thought it was going to be,” O’Donnell told HiddenXperia.

“We launched this franchise with Activision, naturally and over the course of time we both decided we had different goals for what we wanted it to be, so we both went our separate ways.”

Activision and Bungie parted ways with each other last year with the original Halo developer moving to a fully independent studio. While the pairing originally revealed a constantly evolving ten-year journey for the Destiny IP, Activision’s leadership quickly derailed plans for the franchise.

Post-independence, Bungie has laid out a lot of its plans for evolving Destiny 2 over the next year and above. With the game’s base form now free-to-play, that will be available day one on next-gen consoles, Destiny 2 finally has the room it needs to grow.

While Destiny wraps up, Bungie is also working on an all new comedic RPG that will release on next-gen machines.