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After Bungie was hit with plagiarism allegations for its Marathon revamp, extra info has been revealed about different issues throughout the firm. Apart from a poisonous work setting coming from the highest of Bungie, firm heads had been pitching to offer Destiny 2 a subscription service on high of already paying for a PlayStation Plus membership.
Former Bungie staff spoke with Save State Plus, claiming that leaders had been fast to close down concepts and would publicly belittle employees.
“Every little thing occurring to Bungie is due to greed,” mentioned a former Destiny 2 developer, which was the main target level for a lot of former staff. When larger-ups pitched a subscription mannequin for Destiny 2, it was solely allegedly shut down because of the employees’s “vehement” opposition. That may imply gamers would pay for a sub on high of different essential subs like PS Plus, relying in your platform. Bungie’s management adopted that up by reportedly holding a gathering the place the employees got a “monetization scolding” for not enabling sufficient microtransactions.
Bungie has made quite a few adjustments to Destiny 2’s monetization since its launch almost eight years in the past, together with a shift to a free-to-play mannequin. The corporate has needed to improve the relevance of the Eververse retailer and seasonal content material passes, each of which embrace paid cosmetics.
In late 2023, Bungie decreased its workforce by over 300 roles, after a drastic fall in income. This put much more stress on totally different strategies of monetizing its video games.
Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, two senior executives at Bungie, had been a part of these layoffs and basic sentiment round Marathon has not been one of the best, however its builders are asking followers to offer the sport an opportunity, regardless of the encircling controversy.
“Marathon may launch as a stable multiplayer shooter that’s brimming with potential however skinny on content material. And within the canine-eat-canine world of multiplayer video games, that might be a significant difficulty,” Tamoor Hussain wrote in GameSpot’s arms-on preview of Marathon.