As a seasoned gamer with decades of experience under my belt, I must say, the news about Bungie’s cancellation of Payback has left me feeling like a kid who’s just found out there won’t be any candy on Halloween.
Despite persistent speculation about the Destiny 2 spinoff, Payback, prior to The Final Shape’s launch, a recent report unveiled that the studio had actually ceased production on it before the last expansion was released.
As reported by Jason Schreier from Bloomberg, Bungie terminated the development of Payback about two months ago in order to focus on projects that were closer to release, shifting most of their team towards Marathon instead, which is planned for a 2025 launch. Essentially, since The Final Shape was released by the studio in early June, they had previously made the decision to abandon the new IP and instead concentrate on the more established extraction shooter game that Bungie hopes will become their “premier live service” title.
Despite some potentially disheartening events, it seems that the current situation for Payback might have been unavoidable due to certain backstage occurrences. In October 2023, a report from Schreier exposed that Bungie’s CEO, Pete Parsons, informed staff about missing revenue targets by 45% and facing financial losses. Consequently, this set off a series of events including initial layoffs and delays in the release of The Final Shape and Marathon.
Furthermore, Parsons added in the studio’s latest layoff notification that they had been overly ambitious, causing their financial safety buffers to exceed, leading them into operating at a loss. However, the cancellation of Payback doesn’t automatically mean it won’t resurface eventually. Bungie might decide to resume work on what was initially considered Destiny 2’s sequel (although Schreier suggests viewing it more as a “spin-off”).
It seems that Bungie’s long-term plans are unclear, as highlighted by the recent departures of key figures such as Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy from the company. This could potentially lead to a pause in development for projects beyond Destiny 2 and Marathon.
In the meantime, take a look at the recent happenings in our field, including the formation of a new AAA game development team by Microsoft and Activision.
Read More
Sorry. No data so far.
2024-08-03 02:40