After 17 percent of Bungie’s staff was laid off yesterday, the future of the Destiny franchise is now way murkier than before, according to reports.
On the Aug. 1 episode of the Game Mess Mornings podcast, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb reported that the next Destiny project, codenamed “Payback,” has had its development halted. He said that “Payload [later clarified to be Payback], which is the ‘next Destiny,’ is being shelved indefinitely.”
He clarified that Bungie does not consider Payback to be Destiny 3, but a side project within the universe of sorts. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier said something similar, confirming Destiny 3 has not been canceled in response to chatter on social media following Grubb’s comments.
“Just to clear up some rumors floating around, Destiny 3 was not canceled because it was never in development, per people familiar,” Schreier said. “Bungie did some very early work on a spinoff project called ‘Payback,’ but they canceled that a while ago.”
Given today’s news, the future of the franchise now seems more tepid than ever. Yesterday, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons announced 220 layoffs, less than a year after over 100 employees were laid off. Not only that, but 155 other roles will be “integrated into Sony” while another 75 workers will be spun off into a new studio under Sony, according to Parsons. In short, things are quite hectic at the Bellevue-based studio.
Just this past June, after releasing the acclaimed The Final Shape expansion, Bungie announced Codename Frontiers, which is to be the next step in Destiny. It’s unclear if this was Payback or something different entirely.
For the immediate future, Bungie will still release episodic content in Destiny 2 every few months with story beats, new content, and additional gameplay elements along with new weapons and gear.
