Bungie ends Activision partnership and retains rights to Destiny

Developer Bungie and publisher Activision end the collaboration, with Bungie having stipulated that it may retain the rights to Destiny, the game where the two worked together. Bungie will release Destiny itself.

Bungie and Activision signed a ten-year contract in 2010 for a then-unknown game, the rights of which would lie with Activision. Part of the deal was that Bungie would deliver a new installment in the series or an expansion each year. That last demand has always been a point of contention between the two sides, as Bungie wanted to spend more time developing the games and expansions. That led to a split. Bungie announced in a statement on its website that the studio and publisher have terminated the contract, with Bungie stipulating that the rights will be held by Bungie. Destiny will remain available via Battle.net, Blizzard’s portal that is part of the Activision group.

In the statement, Bungie has praise for Activision. The studio states that eight years ago it could not have released a game like Destiny on its own, but that the market has now changed and it now sees a chance to market Destiny itself. The Kotaku website picked up different sounds from Bungie employees. When the end of the deal was announced internally, there were loud cheers and champagne.

It is not the first time that Bungie has ended its partnership with a major party. Founded in 1991, the studio was bought by Microsoft in 2000, after which the studio would create Halo: Combat Evolved, which would be released at the same time as the first Xbox. In 2007 Bungie bought itself free, after which it could continue as an independent company. The rights to Halo remained with Microsoft. Even then there was cheering from the employees. Even then, the collaboration between studio and publisher did not go smoothly, according to insiders. Bungie is now working alongside Destiny on an as yet unknown new game, made possible by a hefty investment from the Chinese NetEase, which put 100 million dollars into the project.