The value of the "We messed up" tour (Destiny)

by Avateur , Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 08:38 (17 hours, 19 minutes ago) @ squidnh3

If my interpretation is true, they are not explaining the part about why they thought a large group of people would respond to their hardcore extraction shooter when that had never happened before. To me, that lessens the value of the apology tour video.

If your interpretation is true (whoops, we made a hardcore game but spent too much money), they are straight up lying in this video about what happened, which definitely contradicts the message of the video.

What I believe actually happened is that they absolutely thought Marathon would be a breakout hit and purposefully poured the amount of money into it that they did. The reason they thought it would be a breakout hit - hubris and group think. They are Bungie, and even though I, a Bungie employee, am skeptical about the prospects of this game, everyone else seems positive, so I will stay positive too.

It’s complicated. The way I had it explained to me was that Marathon started out with character customization, puzzles, and maybe larger map concepts for extraction. Concepts keep shifting or expanding, and more money gets poured into it, but it never gets any closer to launch. Years pass, more money goes into it. Chris Barrett gets let go, lawsuit, etc. Ziegler gets brought in and changes it into a hardcore hero shooter extraction game that plays more like a battle royale but with an extraction. Puzzles and mysteries and things disappear. Hardcore primary focus PvP extraction, and more money to make it be in a state that it can launch. And it does launch.

As for the why behind how they thought this game would appeal to so many people and blow up, I think that’s mismanagement and hubris, which is pretty much where you’re at with it. Ziegler telling people if you primarily want PvE, well, this game isn’t for you and they’re comfortable with that. We’ve heard it said before, but niche genre, niche hardcore focus within it, and openly saying they’re good with less players and interest and focus on the PvE portion of the PvPvE experience.

So, in my opinion, it was a matter of mismanaged development itself that kept Marathon from ever releasing and costing more and more money. And the thought that the Bungie Magic and love of Halo and Destiny that would just make people show up and play the game, problems and all, even after all of the seemingly ignored feedback from the closed and open playtests. Then you have a shift in its “design and vision” with Ziegler, which still costs time and money, but does see it release, but people are left baffled at how it essentially launches in the same state as the Alpha (give or take some improvements) and immediately drop the game.

All of this is a lot to say that this apology tour is from a different set of management and people trying to save the game and actually begin implementing feedback that’s been received from the Alpha through to the present and trying to learn lessons that games like Tarkov and even Arc had already learned (or are still learning) that Bungie seemingly ignored.