Ex-Bungie lawyer praises Sony for “forcing” Destiny 2 devs to make major changes

Following the announcement that Destiny 2 will be making major changes to how it handles future expansions and approachability, a former lawyer for Bungie supported the news and Sony’s overall handling of the studio after its acquisition.

Legal expert Don McGowan, who worked as Bungie’s General Counsel for three years until he was laid off in November 2023, praised Sony in a post on his LinkedIn account that links to a Kotaku article.

“Much though it pains me to say this, it appears that Sony’s inflicting some discipline on my former colleagues may have forced them to fix the things that were wrong with their game,” McGowan said before discussing some of the issues he noticed in his time at Bungie.

“To be clear: I’m not talking about the layoffs, I’m talking about forcing them to get their heads out of their a**** and focus on things like: implementing a method of new player acquisition; not just doing fan service for the fans in the Bungie C-suite; and running the game like a business.”

Bungie specifically discussed Destiny 2’s approachability issues in a blog post celebrating the series’ 10th anniversary and laid out future plans for the game. In it, director Tyson Green admitted players “practically need a PhD” to navigate its hundreds of activities and promised changes to make the game more approachable, starting with UI modernization.

McGowan also criticized the various “egos” among Bungie leadership who wanted to “pretend that ‘nothing would change'” after Sony acquired the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022.

“I remember sitting there during the deal saying ‘do you think Sony describes this as them getting to pay $3.6 billion for the right to have no input into what Bungie does?’ That was exactly what a lot of people thought,” he shared.

The legal expert ended the post by saying “The changes described in this article are the things you do to run a franchise, not to keep making the game you and your friends have mastered, or to chase trends.”

Beyond the approachability improvements, Bungie has also revealed that Destiny 2 will change its approach to new content releases after they “closed a door with The Final Shape” back in June 2024. Rather than receiving one massive annual expansion, the game will get two “medium-sized Expansions” a year, as well as four major free updates.

Destiny 2’s new release schedule kicks off with the codename Apollo expansion in summer 2025.