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Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter
I don’t believe Paul. I think the game was extremely profitable, I don’t think the studio was profitable. I mean, when we know how awful and inefficient management was, how lazy and retarded Jason Jones and Pete Parsons were, it makes sense. He even says in the article; whenever D2 made them money, they threw the profits at shit other than D2. Not exactly smart when it’s your only fucking game going.
I think you put a lot more faith in Marathon fans than you should. There might only be about 30ish-thousand Blast Havers left, but you only need a fraction of them to be whales to keep the lights on.
It is true for games with infinite ways to spend money (typically gacha games) or Battle Passes like in Dota 2 (I believe Valve stopped doing them) but as I know Marathon has limited amount of items in the store and no other way to spend premium currency, so at the worst a whale would buy all of it and waste ~500$ dollars compared to gacha gamers wasting generational wealth per month.
I don’t believe Paul. I think the game was extremely profitable, I don’t think the studio was profitable. I mean, when we know how awful and inefficient management was, how lazy and retarded Jason Jones and Pete Parsons were, it makes sense. He even says in the article; whenever D2 made them money, they threw the profits at shit other than D2. Not exactly smart when it’s your only fucking game going.
I don’t believe Paul. I think the game was extremely profitable, I don’t think the studio was profitable. I mean, when we know how awful and inefficient management was, how lazy and retarded Jason Jones and Pete Parsons were, it makes sense. He even says in the article; whenever D2 made them money, they threw the profits at shit other than D2. Not exactly smart when it’s your only fucking game going.
Pre-Marathon - Bungie was the Destiny company and carried ~1,500 employees (until recently, lol). Let's just make a few assumptions for simplicity.
Destiny 2 was in development from 2014 until 2026 so let's say 12 years of Dev time. Not every dev was working on Destiny 2 (some would have been on the Destiny 1 wrap up, and some would go on to Marathon) so let's say 1000 developers as an average. There was a a period where all ~1,500 were D2, and there was a period where it was a 50/50 split with Marathon but for the sake of argument.
1,000 Devs making an average of 100,000/year for 12 years alone is $1.2 billion dollars of lifecycle cost (before any software, licensing, Peter Dinklage money for VA, and every other dev cost). All in they probably spent $3 Billion in total costs.
It sounds like Destiny 2 made roughly $3 Billion early on so the first two years were likely very profitable but they never "wound down" the dev team - so they would spend in excess of $100,000,000 every year and not even make that back past the launch years. I can't speak to the D2 DLC/Expansions but the expected result would be losing playerbase after each expansion so the revenue would dwindle but the cost didn't go down to compensate.
So D2 was probably profitable early on but lost a bunch of money because of completely retarded management waste (you don't need hundreds of devs for an ongoing game).
Sony (if we're being charitable) saw a company that was capable of making billions of dollars and thought they could streamline the process to maximize the profits. It's entirely possible that the layoffs/impariment loss were part of the strategy to actually make Bungie profitable.
It's possible they looked at the books and headcount and thought "there's a few billion here if they just had the balls to do layoffs" but it's also possible they just thought Marathon would do Destiny numbers because Bungie and would handle the wind down then.
Marathon has limited amount of items in the store and no other way to spend premium currency, so at the worst a whale would buy all of it and waste ~500$ dollars compared to gacha gamers wasting generational wealth per month.
Brand new AAA game is 40 dollars and then the in game store is incredibly sparse. People are buying stuff to make up for that 40 dollar release, but again the store is sparse.
Destiny had a problem with the shop as well, they sold skins for exotics to look better, loads of them, however, most exotics suck ass in a big way, so it doesn't matter that this here skin looks cool, you have to wear Phoenix Protocol to see it
Destiny had a problem with the shop as well, they sold skins for exotics to look better, loads of them, however, most exotics suck ass in a big way, so it doesn't matter that this here skin looks cool, you have to wear Phoenix Protocol to see it Wyświetl załącznik 9213217
Surprised they didn't do the Warframe route where they keep reworking the old frames/weapons to bring up to speed with the inevitable power creep. It's how you sell more Heirloom Ember skins after all.
I don’t believe Paul. I think the game was extremely profitable, I don’t think the studio was profitable. I mean, when we know how awful and inefficient management was, how lazy and retarded Jason Jones and Pete Parsons were, it makes sense. He even says in the article; whenever D2 made them money, they threw the profits at shit other than D2. Not exactly smart when it’s your only fucking game going.
Pre-Marathon - Bungie was the Destiny company and carried ~1,500 employees (until recently, lol). Let's just make a few assumptions for simplicity.
Destiny 2 was in development from 2014 until 2026 so let's say 12 years of Dev time. Not every dev was working on Destiny 2 (some would have been on the Destiny 1 wrap up, and some would go on to Marathon) so let's say 1000 developers as an average. There was a a period where all ~1,500 were D2, and there was a period where it was a 50/50 split with Marathon but for the sake of argument.
1,000 Devs making an average of 100,000/year for 12 years alone is $1.2 billion dollars of lifecycle cost (before any software, licensing, Peter Dinklage money for VA, and every other dev cost). All in they probably spent $3 Billion in total costs.
It sounds like Destiny 2 made roughly $3 Billion early on so the first two years were likely very profitable but they never "wound down" the dev team - so they would spend in excess of $100,000,000 every year and not even make that back past the launch years. I can't speak to the D2 DLC/Expansions but the expected result would be losing playerbase after each expansion so the revenue would dwindle but the cost didn't go down to compensate.
So D2 was probably profitable early on but lost a bunch of money because of completely retarded management waste (you don't need hundreds of devs for an ongoing game).
I think Tassi and you two are talking about the same thing, just slightly differently. it seems like you all agree
(1) destiny was rarely profitable because Bungie had 500-1000 too many employees. i dunno what about their process means they need to overstaff so much, it's not clear if they have a bunch of dead weight or if everyone is giving a solid 40%, or if it's all like marathon where they just wasted years of dev time in dead ends.
(2) when Destiny did generate profit despite its bloated staffing, Bungie management squandered it
Surprised they didn't do the Warframe route where they keep reworking the old frames/weapons to bring up to speed with the inevitable power creep. It's how you sell more Heirloom Ember skins after all.
Because Bungie hates fun and nerfs are their language, things ship as powerful as they will ever be, then they hammer them with nerfs, there are dozens of exotics that were never good and they made skins for all of them, I can count the amount of reworked or buffed exotics on one hand
The handheld supernova ability Warlocks have was hit with so many nerfs it'd make your head spin .. and they just kept nerfing it, it was unplayable after the 2nd nerf, they nerfed it 7 more times, eventually it did more self damage than it did to other players among other drawbacks
Destiny had a problem with the shop as well, they sold skins for exotics to look better, loads of them, however, most exotics suck ass in a big way, so it doesn't matter that this here skin looks cool, you have to wear Phoenix Protocol to see it Wyświetl załącznik 9213217
They did actually address this finally within the last year. A few months ago, they allowed for any exotic ornament to be applied to any exotic, and with this last update, they expanded that to include any ornament period (visuals disabled in PVP so people know what you're using though). So now you can finally have your ideal look without having to deal with your exotic throwing off the whole outfit. Shame it took until literally EoL for the game for that to happen, but oh well.
I think Tassi and you two are talking about the same thing, just slightly differently. it seems like you all agree
(1) destiny was rarely profitable because Bungie had 500-1000 too many employees. i dunno what about their process means they need to overstaff so much, it's not clear if they have a bunch of dead weight or if everyone is giving a solid 40%, or if it's all like marathon where they just wasted years of dev time in dead ends.
(2) when Destiny did generate profit despite its bloated staffing, Bungie management squandered it
One of the big things that fucked them over, much like a lot of the rest of the gaming industry, was the notion that the coof boom would never go away. Zero interest rates, free money getting thrown around constantly, millions of people forced to stay home and do nothing but play video games...they figured it was a great time to expand ridiculously huge. They had a lot of devs before the coof, but they hired on hundreds more during that period, the studio getting up to something like 1600 employees at its height. Add on a major studio expansion/remodel and funding getting thrown at all these incubation projects, and it's no surprise they ended up in deep shit once the gravy train stopped.
The last thing they seemed to want to do was put any of those funds towards making systemic improvements to their sole moneymaker, instead deciding that a constant churn of adding and removing content was a much smarter course of action. Their captive audience still played and enjoyed it, but they stopped getting an influx of new players as D2 got the (deserved) reputation of being a confusing game that removes stuff you paid for. And as older players continued to drop out over time due to natural attrition and burnout, the population kept dwindling because nobody was coming in to replace them. And then that led to the predictable result: layoffs, downsizing, and eventually axing the whole thing altogether.
Granted, a lot of these issues started even earlier, and maybe Destiny was always too much for them to develop. It's just stupid that it feels like it died for no good reason (with a nod to Ross Scott, there were no good reasons, only financial ones), when fans were clamoring for so many things that would have made it better and they just refused every time. Doesn't help that PVP got neglected for years there while the lead devs got shuttled over to Marathon, though...
Surprised they didn't do the Warframe route where they keep reworking the old frames/weapons to bring up to speed with the inevitable power creep. It's how you sell more Heirloom Ember skins after all.
It’s why the numbers are still really good. Other than the lack of FOMO leading to less burnout because you can take your time, they went through (the weapons atleast) and reworked them or added new catalysts that make them as universal as possible. There’s so many viable builds, every class, subclass, weapon feels viable and fun to play. You don’t have to be meta anymore. And all it took, like king said, was the game dying lol.
It’s why the numbers are still really good. Other than the lack of FOMO leading to less burnout because you can take your time, they went through (the weapons atleast) and reworked them or added new catalysts that make them as universal as possible. There’s so many viable builds, every class, subclass, weapon feels viable and fun to play. You don’t have to be meta anymore. And all it took, like king said, was the game dying lol.
In contrast, from my understanding of @creaturestorm's posts on the matter, it seems that the Marathon team is making the same mistakes the Destiny team did over the years, which is to take something that's working okay and, instead of making minor tweaks to improve it, basically throw it out entirely.
Any longtime Destiny players know how it feels when Bungie "rebalanced" things and ended up completely fucking something that players were enjoying over, oftentimes for no reason other than to do something different. I can think of no better example than the transition from D1 to D2, where Luke Smith really wanted Destiny to be a competitive shooter like Halo used to be. To that end, abilities were nerfed to where you rarely got to use them, movement was slowed down, and weapons were restricted to dual primaries and a single "power" weapon that included all of the old special and heavy weapons. Oh, and let's not forget static rolls on weapons and no stats on armor.
Naturally, this resulted in a sandbox that was much less fun with significantly less loot to chase (there was practically no benefit to having more than one of a weapon, and definitely no more than three), and Luke didn't get his Destiny esport like he wanted. Player count plummeted, and if it weren't for some rapid deployment of patches to unfuck things, coupled with Forsaken drastically overhauling the sandbox and making things closer to how they were in D1, the entire studio may have shut down that year. (There are many more examples, but this is probably the biggest.)
Now, the remaining Marathon devs seem to be throwing anything at the wall to get people to stick around and play more, whether it's throwing more free kits at players or promising more pure PVE or PVP modes to come. I'll defer to the experience of those actually playing, but what I've taken from reading those posts is that the game could mostly use some fine-tuned tweaks instead of upending everything and trying to make the game something it isn't. But unfortunately, that ain't the Bungo balancing method.
Well yeah, Jason is a retard, we’ve established that and now that he was finally removed from his glorified welfare position; many in the normie space are also seeing him for what he is. A charlatan who had a few good ideas in the 90s, when he didn’t want to develop boring software for normal corporations. He’s been washed up ever since like, what? Halo 2? CE? Hell, I think Destiny survived in spite of Jason Jones. He was the one who personally Vetoed Joseph Staten’s original, more grimdark version of D1’s plot and lore.
Warframe, despite also being filled with niggers and trannies and women writers (including Rebecca, who has some whacky and retarded personal, political, and world views), is atleast still the same game, content wise, all these years later. They’ve updated stuff like the intro missions, and made it more streamlined to further help with new player onboarding; but it is essentially the same game it was now as 2013. And how about every single other MMO? Maybe they’ve changed massively, like WoW, or had to remake their originally more popular game, like Classic RuneScape, but I just don’t believe that this was too hard for Bungie.
Many other studios have kept live service games going way longer than before the concept even had an industry name, fuck, Bungie popularized that fucking name. I truly think it’s nothing but studio bloat and generationally bad management that killed this game and potentially the studio itself. Anyone else, literally any other studio, would have made this work.
Was having a really bad night in terms of monetary gains. We would roll up and absolutely stomp some team with purple and gold gear, then some random dick heads in green kits would get the jump on us in the most ridiculous ways. In one scenario there was about 10 minutes left in the match and we head to a POI, there was a team hiding in the POI, just hiding in it.... I have no discernable reason why. The place looked unlooted, the bots were not killed, exfils had not been called, most of the map had been killed at this point. There they were though, they just stumbled into us with our backs turned.
The entire night was like this. Just tons of weirdos not behaving in a way that follows map flow, doing odd shit in odd places. Never making a sound.
We strapped on budget kits on the last run of the night. We ended up clutching a 3v2, ended up snow balling into a purple team. With the map clear we looted every POI, did the PvE event, and on our way out I just rubber band through the fucking map and I'm instantly killed. Team mates could not rez me in time, they did what they could and also costed them the run.
I understand some of the rage the D2 people have for this company. 13 players all wasted their time and kits that run., silver linings.
(1) destiny was rarely profitable because Bungie had 500-1000 too many employees. i dunno what about their process means they need to overstaff so much, it's not clear if they have a bunch of dead weight or if everyone is giving a solid 40%, or if it's all like marathon where they just wasted years of dev time in dead ends.
(2) when Destiny did generate profit despite its bloated staffing, Bungie management squandered it
I think the answer might be right there. If it seems too retarded to be true, it might be intentional. There are people who walked away from this with stuffed bank account and garage full of luxury cars.
Games aside, people got paid. It's possible they cynically used Bungie's name to finesse publishers. Studio heads and upper management, at least.
Recklessly hiring people to keep the ball rolling is not a long-term solution, and they never really addressed the bloat. Meaning they're either that short-sighted or they didn't give a shit about longevity for some reason.
I think the answer might be right there. If it seems too retarded to be true, it might be intentional. There are people who walked away from this with stuffed bank account and garage full of luxury cars.
Games aside, people got paid. It's possible they cynically used Bungie's name to finesse publishers. Studio heads and upper management, at least.
Recklessly hiring people to keep the ball rolling is not a long-term solution, and they never really addressed the bloat. Meaning they're either that short-sighted or they didn't give a shit about longevity for some reason.
It's okay to think that the executives were actually retards. Because they were, in this case. They could have had a billion dollar franchise in both Destiny and cultivating Marathon. They decided to kill it for sports cars instead, and leaving others to clean up the debris.
