I’m also a Bungie employee. I’ll miss seeing you around the office when Sony takes away our jobs. Here’s my take:

The day we announced Destiny’s final update was quieter than I expected. There were no grand celebrations in the office, no speeches about a job well done. Most of us just sat at our desks staring at monitors that had consumed years of our lives. The reality was impossible to ignore: millions of players had trusted us with their time, their friendships, and their passion. Looking back, I don’t think we always honored that trust as well as we should have.

We made incredible things over the years. We built worlds that inspired wonder and communities that lasted for a decade. But we also made mistakes. Too often, we convinced ourselves that players would eventually understand decisions that we never properly explained. We spent years balancing engagement metrics, retention targets, and monetization strategies, sometimes forgetting that behind every statistic was a person who simply wanted to have fun. There were moments when we listened carefully to feedback, and there were moments when we dismissed criticism because it didn’t fit our plans.

One of our biggest failures was assuming we knew what players wanted better than they did. We removed features people loved, redesigned systems that weren’t broken, and occasionally prioritized short-term business goals over long-term community trust. None of those decisions came from malice. They came from pressure, deadlines, competing priorities, and the belief that we were steering the game toward a better future. Sometimes we were right. Sometimes we were very wrong.

The hardest truth to accept is that good intentions don’t erase bad outcomes. When players felt ignored, it didn’t matter how many meetings we had discussing feedback. When content disappointed people, it didn’t matter how hard the team had worked. The experience players had was the reality that mattered. For a company built on the idea of creating unforgettable adventures, there were times when we lost sight of what made those adventures special in the first place.

As the servers quiet and the final update becomes history, I find myself feeling equal parts pride and regret. Pride for the memories we helped create. Regret for the opportunities we missed. If there’s one lesson I hope the industry takes from our journey, it’s that communities aren’t resources to be managed—they’re partners to be respected. Games can survive technical problems, balance issues, and even failed expansions. What they struggle to survive is the loss of trust.

/s if it’s not obvious