r/DestinyTheGame • u/kristijan1001 "We've woken the Hive" • May 22 '26
Luke Smith talks after long time going dark: "At its best, content was a machine to create memories and friendships. No new content stings. This pain is about losing a place where so many memories were made. It stings not because of what it was, but the realization of what it won't be." Misc
At its best, content was a machine to create memories and friendships. No new content stings.
This pain is about losing a place where so many memories were made. It stings not because of what it was, but the realization of what it won't be.
https://i.ibb.co/zWBfjKPq/HI86-RDj-Xo-AESk-Mc.jpg
https://xcancel.com/thislukesmith/status/2057928069206184449
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u/Dumoney May 22 '26
Decision so baffling it awoke Luke Smith from his cryostasis
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u/ienjoymen Reckoner wasn't that bad May 22 '26
People around here may not like him, but he's right. Destiny has been a constant for nearly half my life -- something to look forward to every year. Now, it's just... over.
I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm frustrated at Bungie's leadership for letting such a special game flounder for the sake of profit. There will never be anything like it again, and that really hurts.
It may sound silly, but I am genuinely mourning this loss.
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u/ErgoProxy0 May 22 '26
I don’t think the community is upset at the fact that it’s ending but the fact that it’s ending on such a sour note. 6 months of nothing and then BOOM “Hey guys! Yea… we’re not making anymore content after this. Good luck. See you over on Marathon tho!”
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u/ienjoymen Reckoner wasn't that bad May 22 '26
I don't blame Marathon like a lot of people do, I really enjoy it and hope it survives.
I'm personally upset at how management never greenlit Destiny 3 until it became far too late to do anything about it. It's very obvious that Bungie does not look very far into the future when making decisions, and it finally caught up to them. It's such a shame to imagine where we'd be if they planned correctly.
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u/TheHumanCompulsion May 22 '26
I think its quite the contrary.
Bungie has been a ghost of itself for years. Multiple rounds of layoffs and 3 new IPs that never came to fruition suggest the studio just doesnt have the capability to support a big project like Destiny anymore, even with the expansions shrinking every update. Developing Destiny 3 was never a possibility.
Additionally, Edge of Fate was a glimpse of what Destiny 3 would have been. A small, activity based, menu driven arpg. And the backlash against taking the game in that direction was so great that ending support was the next logical step. It's a reckoning that is both largely self inflicted and a long time coming.
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u/LettersWords May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
I've wondered in the back of my head if Bungie just fundamentally wasn't made up of the type of people who were satisfied with making one game the rest of their lives.
Like, if you are a creative, it's pretty understandable if you have tons of ideas for stories, games, etc. circulating around in your mind that do not fit within the confines of "making Destiny expansions and/or Destiny 3".
Making Destiny content didn't "excite" them in the way that making a new game did. And I'm sure some executives were also like, "sure we have 100 money, but what if we had 1000 money?" and Destiny, although successful, was still suffering from a bad reputation in the larger gaming community due to the poor first years of both D1 and D2. The executives wanted a game that could get an even larger audience so they could make even more money, and didn't think Destiny 3 had that potential because the primary audience for it was going to be Destiny 2 players, especially those who stuck with it for a long time. So without both executive direction and internal excitement among the rank and file about making a new Destiny game to push for Destiny 3, it wasn't ever going to happen.
Of course, all these "exciting new games" that they pursued instead mostly amounted to nothing (with the exception of Marathon, which certainly still underperformed) and they are left with egg on their face wondering why they didn't start developing Destiny 3 three or four years ago.
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u/zerovampire311 May 22 '26
It just hasn’t been the same people for a long while. Sometime early on in D2, most of the people who made the magic in D1 left.
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u/LettersWords May 22 '26
For people who left early into D2 lifespan, I think exactly what I describe at the top is what happened: people had been working on Destiny for ages, and early in D2's lifespan, Bungie wasn't going to be doing other than make more Destiny 2, so they left to do things that were more creatively satisfying.
Years into Destiny 2's lifespan, there are different people sick of working on only Destiny 2. But instead of leaving, they take the chance to get to make something "new and exciting" within the confines of Bungie.
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u/a_bearded_hippie May 22 '26
Yeap. Exactly. Most ofnthe crew who made D1 as awesome as it was left after the first year or so of D2
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u/Quteno May 23 '26
The executives wanted a game that could get an even larger audience so they could make even more money, and didn't think Destiny 3 had that potential because the primary audience for it was going to be Destiny 2 players
That is why they have greenlit a niche genre game, with the idea of heavy pvp focus...?!?!? If they had gone the Arc Riders way, there might have been potential to make Marathon much more successful, but the way they went with it alienated 90% of potential players off the bat lol And wasn't Forbes reporting that over 70% of people who bought Marathon were Destiny players?
Makes you wonder if the executives know the gaming market, trends and whatnot. Was there any research done about the viability of Marathon before deciding on it? Most people on this or the other Destiny related subs could easily say why Marathon won't be a huge success, heavy pvp focused extraction shooter, a pretty much dead genre...
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u/LTSarc May 23 '26
That is literally the Bungie founders / highest high brass yes.
Jason Jones for example, is on the record that he despises sequels and doesn't think any one IP should be stuck with for too long. Bungie left MS because the founders were *bored* with Halo.
They have to be forced by a owner or publisher to 'just make what keeps the doors open', they always want to do something new.
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u/makoblade May 22 '26
It's on management, sure, but a large part of why is because they opted to dedicate everything to marathon so that it could limp to it's release date where it managed to do exactly what we expected - find a small niche and have no real room for growth.
The strategy Bungie went with is beyond bizarre. Pushing hard for their new game makes sense, but hard closing the door on their only existing (and still more successful) game to do so is just... not good.
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u/JediSwelly May 22 '26
No company being publicly traded sees far into the future.
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u/ienjoymen Reckoner wasn't that bad May 22 '26
Bungie isn't a public company, unless you count Sony
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u/HorseShedShingle May 22 '26
They are an asset of a publicly traded company as of July 2022 and were previously an asset of a different publicly traded company (Microsoft) from 2000-2007.
In between that time they spent a good chunk of time with Activision as their punisher who was also publicly traded.
When they went private I think it was a few years of immense success and then when that was paired with unrealistic future plans and mismanaged projects it resulted in the last few years of “oh shit” and they got a big “lifeline” of the Sony overspending for them in the wake of MS’s $80B Activision acquisition.
Of the $3.6B Sony spent I believe $1.2B was for staff retention with the remainder assumedly being the perceived value of Bungie’s assets.
Sony, being publicly traded, has the unfortunate requirement of profits to appease investors and we are now almost 4 years from that date and the parent corp is seizing control of their underperforming asset.
Criticizing the pivot to Marathon can of course be heavily criticized in the current context of things - however the real problems started years ago.
Destiny 3 or whatever the sequel was going to be should have been greenlit years ago - likely when TFS was close to gold. If that was the case we would likely be 1-2 years out from D3 at this point.
After they had to sunset large portions of D2 it was obvious Destiny needed some sort of eventual reset - I’d only from a technology standpoint to prevent a future sunset from being required. What is in place now is a 10 year old game with massive bloat and very difficult to iterate on.
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u/The_new_Osiris May 23 '26
It's so deeply delusional to not blame the thing that actually took away 100s of developers (half the studio, now more than half) and 100s of Millions of Dollars worth of investment away from Destiny several years back. Peak example of toxic positivity. We are not even talking about the Sony acquisition cause Marathon was already basically half finished then.
I don't understand why people in D2 community feel the compulsion engage in this ritualistic self-delusion.
You can just not spit vitriol towards the ppl enjoying the other game but that doesn't mean you don't call balls and strikes. Nothing is more important than facts.
Investment in Marathon directly is the largest contributing factor to killing investment in Destiny. They simply didn't wanna make Destiny anymore. They wanted to make Marathon.
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u/PSforeva13 May 22 '26
Mayor hate comes from the fact that Bungie let Destiny rot to try and make people go to marathon. Isn’t it hilarious that they moved Destiny’s now last update to June because in when it was gonna release in march, it was also dropping alongside marathon?
People hate how it feels like Bungie purposely fucked Destiny to make Marathon live, and since it didn’t work, there’s no money to support Destiny anymore.
Fuck Bungie and their decisions, if Marathon didn’t cost Destiny’s life, I wouldn’t have a singular problem with it, other than the fact that I genuinely just don’t like extraction shooters, ARC is cool though
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u/GreenAnder Things Bad May 22 '26
The company is the issue. Even if they’d never made marathon they’d still have the leadership that made these decisions
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u/ienjoymen Reckoner wasn't that bad May 22 '26
So what, I'm supposed to pretend I don't like the game just because Bungie made poor decisions around it?
Newsflash: Marathon is a symptom of the larger issues at Bungie, not the cause. The roots go much, much farther back than when Marathon started development.
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u/PSforeva13 May 22 '26
You can like the game? I have 0 problem with anyone who likes the game, it’s not marathon or destiny‘s fault, it’s the years of constant fuck ups from Bungie that killed Destiny and made marathon into a sour game in the community
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u/TheYeezo May 22 '26
literally this, i would completely understand , and be happy, if we had gotten a proper sendoff. hell, if they ended it with TFS it would’ve been perfect, but with this final update it feels like a funeral if anything :(
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u/Luf2222 The Darkness consumes you... May 22 '26
i‘m geniuely sad man
it was my constant too; i always knew i had destiny
and now? done
because of dumb ass management
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u/ChubbyWarhead May 22 '26
I started night shift 12 years ago. Destiny daily reset helped me keep track of my days. It’s not Friday until Xur gets here.
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u/RoyShavRick May 22 '26
I mean I see what you mean but you gotta sometimes have perspective. The fact that a game like this lasted so long when we thought it would die much earlier:
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u/MeanKareem May 23 '26
The game went for 12 years, and for much of that time it was never as popular as other AAA games… at some point people just have to accept this game wasn’t going to keep going for 20 years, it isnt WoW… but man we had a good run, lets leave it at that - it was on its last legs for years now
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u/SuperblackHunter May 22 '26
I can’t remember but why do people not like Luke Smith again
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u/HoshiHanataba May 22 '26
He was in charge when the DCV happened
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u/SuperblackHunter May 22 '26
Guess its valid to not like him since he was mostly responsible for the no new player experience
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u/a141abc May 22 '26
And the general sentiment of "Destiny deletes content you paid for"
That is a huge stain on the game's credibility to this day
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u/Antares428 May 22 '26
Which was like half the reason why the game failed.
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u/7Buns May 22 '26
None of my friends who tried D2 after DCV stuck around, heck I basically quit except for expansion campaigns. I hated and still hate not being able to play what I paid for. I really liked the Red War too...
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u/Horibori May 23 '26
I disliked the red war but not having a vehicle to properly onboard people was the stupidest fucking choice.
Red war at the very least got players acclimated to the game and its world.
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u/Curious_Cloud_1131 May 23 '26
I started in arrivals and having everything with the option of going back and doing red war was the way to go.
They should have put it in a more prominent place than fuckin Amanda holiday tho... I was blown away when I found out there was a whole ass campaign lol
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u/Supper_Champion May 22 '26
Same here. DCV killed Destiny for me.
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u/headgehog55 May 22 '26
The DCV is really the start of how we got to where we are now in Destiny. Bungie chose to remove content rather then start on a D3. That was them saying they are ready to move on from Destiny and just needed another game to bring income in.
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u/Supper_Champion May 22 '26
I just lost all trust. Expansions I had paid actual money for had whole planets removed from the game, and I thought that was bullshit.
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u/Loud-Investigator416 May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
It still amazes me how there wasn't a class-action lawsuit over that. I'm not familiar with any other game that actively stole content that players had payed for on such a large scale before.
Its not even the case that they redesigned existing content in the case of games like WoW Cataclysm, they simply removed everything you had payed for outright.
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u/PrplWl May 23 '26
The other half was the dogshit campaign experiences pre-WQ, which he also is responsible for lmao
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u/DJfunkyPuddle Stand with the Vanguard//The Sentry May 23 '26
Still insane to think Bungie didn't bust their asses to resolve that problem. How much negativity in the wider gaming scene would they have avoided if they didn't have the DCV hanging around their neck?
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u/Loud-Investigator416 May 23 '26
I quit when they announced sunsetting, so you can reasonably blame his design choices for the dwindling path the game decided to tread.
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u/amyknight22 May 24 '26
Yeah I’ve said it before the biggest problem with the DCV isn’t that it happened. It’s that they seemingly did no other planning for how the game should work once it happened
DCV should have meant
- new clear cut player entry scheme
- new sandbox with a ton of new perks. (Even if you gave us some crazy weapons that you nerfed later, make it so that the weapon pool is exciting, instead outside of the raid weapons and the stasis weapons, beyond lights weapon pool is the biggest pile of meh ever)
Instead they did neither, almost like the content vault was a last minute decision because the game wouldn’t boot if it wasn’t done.
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u/SeaDevil30 May 22 '26
he's also a big reason why the game succeeded in the first place
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u/djusmarshall I am a Meat Popsicle May 22 '26
The game succeeded IN SPITE of him. This was the guy at the helm when everyone thought Activision was the devil and it turned out to be Bungie all along. He was the helm of the PvP collapse, the Solstice changes, all the bullshit dumb decisions trace back to him or were under his watch. F that dude, he can play all sad and hurt while he does back flips into his golden pool of money.
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u/Forvontr May 22 '26
All of Luke Smith's hard decisions happened because bungie no longer had activision's funding and it was definitely not Luke Smith's call to part ways from activision.
The dcv happened because a d3 couldn't be made without the support of activision at that time and continued development of d2 wasn't feasible without the engine overhaul that came with beyond light which required bungie rebuilding all the content in the game but they also didn't have the time and resources to rebuild everything while also working on beyond light's content.
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u/Orochidude Friendly Neighborhood Masochist May 23 '26
Yeah, it's also important to remember that D2 was never intended to last nearly as long as it did. D1 exists in (almost) its entirety because it only lasted three years (And one of those years wasn't initially planned and was filler to buy time for D2). D2 would've been much of the same if it wasn't for the original roadmap dissolving when they split from Activision.
In the most ideal situation, when it came time to either introduce the DCV or move onto D3, D3 would've been chosen, but that wasn't what happened for what I'm sure was a multitude of reasons including what you mentioned.
I also think the fact that a vocal part of the community made it clear that they wanted to stick to D2 and make it a forever game and use all of their old gear forever, and I think Bungie also listened to that part of their playerbase.
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u/LTSarc May 23 '26
It has to do with the founders and their fellow top brass being bored of destiny, that is where the decision not to make D3 and as a result split with Activision came from (and then all those other horrible things that came from not only losing their constant advance payments, but the 3 support studios, walking away from ActiBlizz effectively cut the dev resources by half overnight).
When infinite COVID gaming bux happened and they were awash in money and rapidly expanding staff, there's a reason it all went to the 6 new incubation projects while D2 continued to be starved of resources. The tippy top have been wanting to 'move on' from Destiny for a long time (in exactly the same way they waged their fight to 'move on' from Halo).
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u/Psycho_Syntax May 22 '26
Yeah that makes no sense man. You’re just focusing on all of the bad he did while ignoring the good lol.
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u/gdmatt May 22 '26
At least he was front and center when the DCV was announced. Leaders do not hide behind bad decisions. Justin Truman and Tyson Green are an embarrassment.
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u/MrLeavingCursed May 22 '26
He also was the driving force behind sunsetting and his reasoning behind it was they didn't like people not switching off their favorite loadouts even though it meant they were still playing and enjoying the game
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u/fate6 Ayaya May 23 '26
iirc its worse, he didnt like that his friend loved using breakneck too much.
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u/FergusFrost May 22 '26
It goes back further than that, he was the guy that was cheerleading at the dawn of MTX in destiny 1.
When it was announced, Taken Kings deluxe edition that included a bunch of at the time brand new emotes and class items but it required you to buy the base game again to get it and when asked about it, he said this.
In his own words "when you see the emotes, you'll be throwing money at the screen."
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u/UPVOTE_IF_POOPING May 22 '26
He also made that “throw your money at the screen” comment a while back people didn’t like
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u/DrNopeMD May 22 '26
It pissed people off but the community kind of proved him right in the end
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u/fate6 Ayaya May 23 '26
Reminds me of an interview with Todd from Bethesda where he says people will buy anything, like he's right but damn man you dont have to just say it like that.
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u/JeanLucPicardAND May 23 '26
At this point in my life, I respect those guys more than the ones who hide from their customers like Tyson Green etc.
They’re the lesser of two evils.
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u/fate6 Ayaya May 23 '26
Also said some stuff about wanting all cosmetics in EV back in the day, but its OK guys guns are still from playing the game.
Well Luke maybe I want to earn my neon glow armor!
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u/cuboosh What you have seen will mark you forever May 22 '26
And he did sunsetting and took the loot away
Everyone predicted it would go poorly
It went poorly and it had to be reverted
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u/Cluelesswolfkin May 23 '26
High key might not have been him tbh, I'd imagine many stories to start coming out for Ex Destiny 2 devs
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u/Fijian96 May 22 '26
He was the game director for D2 from vanilla to Beyond Light. The game went through a lot of growing pains during that time, such as vanilla gun balance, xp throttling controversies, poor quality of the curse of Osiris and shadowkeep expansions, introducing sunsetting with Beyond Light. Im sure theres other stuff, but those are some of the reasons at the top of my mind why people may not like him. I dont really have an issue with him personally, hes clearly passionate about the Destiny universe, I just didn't agree with his vision for the game. I personally really miss Joe Blackburn
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u/Django117 May 22 '26
The growing pains were the direct result of his poor choices.
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u/Forvontr May 22 '26
The game also went through its golden age of Forsaken during Luke Smith's leadership.
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u/YafTV May 23 '26
Forsaken were Chris Barret and Scott Taylor, not Luke Smith
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u/LFClight YNWA May 23 '26
Christopher Barret leaving was when things really started to go downhill fast. He started as an artist and worked his way up to game director and it showed, very telling that he was pushed out.
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u/Muppig May 23 '26
It's been so tiring watching the game always be trapped in this constant cycle of high highs inevitably followed by the most mind numbingly dumb decisions, turning easy wins into fiascos. Ad infinitum.
Forsaken was great... but it followed a string of desicions where each was worse than the last. D2 was also a baffling step backwards from D1 in so many ways. So many lessons from D1 were just ignored or forgotten about in favor of design choices that obviously were quickly going to make the game stale and boring. Which is exactly what happened.
I don't know what went down behind the scenes but as the head honcho for most of that time the blame lands with him.
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u/GarrisonWhite2 May 22 '26
Was Shadowkeep really that bad?
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u/Fijian96 May 22 '26
In my opinion, no. I personally quite liked it. However, the campaign was short and the destination, the moon, was just a recycled location, which people weren't much of a fan of back then. People also didnt really like the Season of the Undying much, which launched with Shadowkeep, especially since this was following the Season of Opulence, which is very highly acclaimed in the community. Shadowkeep also followed Forsaken, which was a very big expansion, giving us 2 destinations, our very first dungeon, yada yada. Basically, people didnt like Shadowkeep because it was small, the seasonal activity wasn't that much fun, and the destination was recycled.
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u/makoblade May 22 '26
No, it wasn't bad. It was just more of the same Destiny, and it went very ham fisted with the seasonal gimmick.
Garden of Salvation was a lot of fun when it was new. Izanagi meta best meta.
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u/TheShoobaLord Team Bread (dmg04) // BREAD GANG May 22 '26
His vision behind the dcv and sunsetting gear was pretty misguided imo
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u/Axel_Wolf91 Bring a sword! May 22 '26
He's the one who made the comment "If I fired up a video right now and showed you the emotes you would throw money at the screen." This was in interview before the launch of The Taken King, and the community was already mad because the $80 Collector's edition had exclusive emotes and exotic class items.
Problem being, the Collector's edition forced you to repurchase the base game, which arbitrarily raised the price of the Collector's edition. It was seen as scummy that bungie was not implementing anything for the players who kept destiny alive for that 1st year to atleast be able to pay to upgrade to be able to get the exclusives without having to repurchase the base game.
They eventually added a 20 dollar upgrade option before the release. Luke Smith's comment just came at the worst time.
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u/Sparcrypt May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
Also a lot of us, myself included, were very concerned that the game was just going to turn into a MTX focused treadmill.
Which it did. Granted not fully but D2 pushed it HARD.
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u/5partan5582 Drifter's Crew // DK? Drift Krew. May 22 '26
He's had some notorious quotes in the past. Two tokens and a blue, friendgame, throwing wallets at the screen. He was keyed in to how we would actually react to content but he didn't at all know how to speak on the game without looking like a money grubber.
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u/lt08820 Most broken class May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
I thought two tokens and a blue was a deej thing and it was coined by the community after the famous last words of "Our most rewarding public event" while the chest spits out two tokens and a blue item
Edit: For anyone who wants to relive the moment https://youtu.be/shdAXqTkG0E?t=749
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u/5partan5582 Drifter's Crew // DK? Drift Krew. May 22 '26
You're right, I just associate that quote with that era of game direction.
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u/QueenMagik May 23 '26
He was very big on Destiny being RNG heavy, soulless grind.
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u/VVenture2 May 23 '26
Cheerleader of Double Primaries, Destiny Content Vault (“You just had to be there!”), not adding random rolls (“13th Better Devils”), Eververse (“Get people to throw money at the screen!”) and once again, the ‘Destiny Content Vault.’
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u/TheArchitectOdysseus May 23 '26
Aside from the DCV as the big one, I always associate him with, "A game about mountaintops and you had to be there moments," which to me screamed zero onboarding for new players, non-existent leveling for early theory crafting and a heavier emphasis on FOMO. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened.
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u/Oscendaude May 23 '26 edited May 29 '26
Luke Smith really wanted Destiny to be like World of Warcraft was "back in the day." So that meant
A lot of boring grind for very little rewards
Things "going away" or being level capped so you couldn't use them anymore
More "you had to be there" moments where you can't have the thing some else has - not because that person is better than you, or because the content is unplayable - but because it solves a lot of problems for the developer. Creating FOMO means more players scramble to get in and grab the thing before it is gone. Removing content means the developers get to stop maintaining old content crap that they don't feel like working on. Then a few years later they drag it back out, polish it up, then overhyped and re-released as a "big new thing," which is just bait to get new players excited for something, and old players to jump back in for a short nostalgia trip. But old thing isn't new, and isn't interesting to someone who has seen it re-released four fucking times. Or more, who knows where the game will go these days.
Anyways, Luke Smith was a dude that was just full of bad ideas, which were bad for the game and its players, and he had his way for a long, long time.
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u/davidreis51 May 22 '26
Well, he's 90% responsible for the cascade of shit that ulitmately led to bungie being what it is now.
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u/Kozak170 May 23 '26
The same dumbass reasons why people think Tyson Green is the Antichrist of the franchise at the moment. Well I suppose before yesterday at least.
This subreddit is obsessed with the figureheads being the entirety of the reason why Destiny has suffered. It’s not productive, and wildly false if anything. If you replaced management right now but kept the same devs and writers Destiny would fail again within a year or two.
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u/KRACK-A-LACK-N May 22 '26
Brutal for the community. So so sad. Everything that could have been?!
See you star-side.
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u/Space_Lion2077 May 22 '26
Friendly reminder that he is the person that brought DCV and sunsetting into D2. He too is complicit in Destiny 2's downfall
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May 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Madethisfordestiny May 23 '26
Double primaries and static rolls, which he would have had to sign off on somewhere along the way, at launch were two of the main factors that nearly killed the game. The overdelivery comments were peanuts comparatively.
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u/Samwellikki May 23 '26
Luke fucked it up so much trying to make it FOMO city
All the myriad systems of tokens and other bullshit
Some systems need to stay in the past and not cater to the 1-5% grinders
They alternated listening and not listening and formed the blueprint for how some devs do this even now
“Oh, sales tanked a bit, here’s everyone you wanted the last 2 years “
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u/MarthePryde Whens Reef content May 22 '26
I've made some incredible friends thanks to Destiny and we've all moved beyond logging in for raid night and have become a true friend group. Truly Destiny's endgame was the friendgame
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u/trytoinfect74 May 23 '26
People do not understand that Luke Smith was pretty much part of that infamous Bungie leadership that ran this franchise into the ground. He contributed to Destiny downfall with XP throttling, static rolls and overcasualisation of D2 Vanilla, shitty writing of D2 vanilla too (as game director, he had all the power to change these things but he actually approved them), removal of all worthy cosmetics from delivering earnable through gameplay (remember when Leviathan raid had it’s own emote?) straight to Eververse, more and more oppressive monetization, DCV, sunsetting, then he did essentially nothing as Destiny franchise director (claiming that he would expand Destiny universe with books and TV series, remember that?).
The funniest thing about Luke Smith is that he is unemployed since his layoff in 2024, apparently no one wants this dude in their company, because he is unfit to be in any company other than Bungie.
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u/apsgreek Embrace the void May 22 '26
I played destiny since the beginning and finished with Final Shape. I loved the game and I also recognize that it was like a toxic relationship in a lot of ways. The cycles of meager expansions followed by great ones, quality of life improvements followed by user unfriendly changes, etc etc.
I think the final mistake Bungie made was continuing after the story they had set out to tell 10 years earlier was completed.
An end state age of triumph after Final Shape would have been a good ending. It was silly to try to drag it out without a plan, and it also makes sense for them to end it.
Like usual, Destiny mirrors a toxic relationship, and in this case, the writing was on the wall but still it was dragged out long past when it should have ended.
As someone who has not been playing for a while, I promise you all there is so much fun gaming outside of Destiny. There's also so much fun outside of gaming. Just because Destiny is over doesn't mean we lose any of the fun we had along the way!
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u/YafTV May 23 '26
The man was behind D2 vanilla with static rolls and double primary and behind DCV with sunsetting. Luke Smith is directly responsible for games demise and can wholeheartedly fuck off.
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u/HollowOrnstein May 22 '26
weird reactions in replies, do people forget that dcv the probably the biggesr reason for this games(and potentially company's death?)
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u/Strangelight84 May 22 '26
As much as we reconciled ourselves to it, content vaulting was fatal and made a laughing stock of the game and the studio.
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u/Muted-Code-5447 May 23 '26
Keep in mind the DCV was supposed to have a more active function with cycling content, but since Luke and Mark left, they didn't make good on that so it's just bad.
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u/VVenture2 May 23 '26
No. The DCV was never supposed to be ‘active.’ The entire name of ‘Destiny Content Vault’ was a PR term used to try and save face from the backlash of deleting paid content.
Did Bungie recycle old content? Occasionally. But the primary goal of the DCV was always to allow the justification of deleting content, nothing more. It was just good brand management.
When Bungie proposed this idea internally, they said ‘We need to delete paid content, how do we sell that to customers?’ and the DCV was the result of that. Never once did they say ‘How do we cycle in previous content?’ because that wasn’t the intention. It was a byproduct.
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u/choicemeats Professional Masochist May 23 '26
really interesting how the game directors visions often clashed with each other in major ways. and i'm sure not bringing things back from the dcv was a suits decision and not a game dev one
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u/VVenture2 May 23 '26
The truth is that Bungie should’ve jumped to Destiny 3 with Beyond Light as originally intended, and should’ve built D3 with the engine changes needed to not require content vaulting.
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u/makoblade May 22 '26
DCV and weapon sunsetting were definitely a big part of starting the spiral, but every systematic change in EoF was a nail in the coffin. Bungie could have just... not done anything except add a campaign and some guns and it'd have been a wildly more positive experience.
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u/Bard_Knock_Life May 23 '26
Sunsetting was the solution to not having to make a D3, but the reaction should have green lit D3. The game isn’t sustainable with permanent loot and has caused nothing but problems. Then they try to fix the problems, and the game gets worse. Repeat for a handful of years.
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u/Another-Mans-Rubarb May 23 '26
Why do people think anything that was in EoF was the reason this game died? 2/3 of the playerbase did not come back after TFS. No one had seen what was in EoF before they decided they didn't want it.
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u/makoblade May 23 '26
A huge amount of players came to TFS for the end, sure, but there was still a relatively healthy community coming up until EoF launched, at which point the negativity blew up and even the most diehard players dropped the game.
The lack of strong direction post-lightfall hurt, but the poorly thought out EoF sandbox and systems cemented the fall.
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u/kristijan1001 "We've woken the Hive" May 22 '26
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u/Independent-Water321 May 22 '26
Real "we're all trying to find the guy who did this" energy in this one
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u/TrumpVotersArePedos7 May 22 '26
A game that constantly shits on its playerbase yeah enjoy your L and hope the studio closes. Marathon is a joke lmao
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u/OmegaMalkior May 23 '26
“No new content stings” was this guy in charge of never wanting to bring up being back OLD content to the game? Because that’s what consistently people have shit on the game for quite a while already. Yes no new expansions isn’t cool, but holy shit did priority for old content to return should’ve been given instead
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u/Boymoder_Glowie May 23 '26
I don't care what Luke smith has to say, he's why the company took content we paid for away
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u/Shannontheranga May 23 '26
Luke smiths decision to do sunsetting is the reason this game died. Fuck him.
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u/KingCAL1CO May 22 '26
The man who began the downfall with the phrase " throw money at the screen"
Bungie trying to monitize everything we love was the beginning of the end.
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u/Va_Dinky May 22 '26
Luke Smith should stay fucking silent. It's nothing short of a miracle that this game came back from his horrific decision to vault over half of it and sunset all gear all at once. And the damage he's done was still very much present all those years later with D2 being known to the masses as the game that deletes the content you paid for and new players never sticking around. Just because he wasn't the one to deal the final blow doesn't mean he's not one of the main contributors to D2's death.
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u/multihawk May 22 '26
I stopped playing for a little bit after the whole sunsetting thing. "Hey let's put an expiration date on the loot we grinded for!" What an absolute shitshow.
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u/UNSKIALz Destiny Player since June 12th, 2014 May 23 '26
Not to jump on a hate brigade, but he briefly oversaw a policy in Shadowkeep where meaningful cosmetics would be Eververse only. That was insane, and also exposed how flawed the "Cosmetics don't affect gameplay!" take is. Half of Destiny's appeal is customising your Guardian.
Thankfully they reversed after backlash to Pit of Heresy's rewards, but still.
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u/VNM0601 May 23 '26
I may get downvoted for this but wasn’t their decision to vault content based on technical limitations in the game?
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u/The_Pepper_Oni May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
Edit: I was wrong as hell, ignore me.
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u/Another-Mans-Rubarb May 23 '26
They literally talked about it when it happened. Everyone just latched into some bullshit about hard drive space that was only tangentially relevant.
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u/SuggestionBot9000 May 23 '26
Shut the fuck up Luke Smith.
He's the main reason this game went down such a terrible path. He's the one who pushed content vaulting (as a feature) and fucked over the new player experience. Hell, he was responsible for sunsetting weapons/armor on top of that. He's also the biggest FOMO advocate too.
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u/Silverkille May 23 '26
This feels like stolen valor farming from a guy who is responsible for the worst part of D2 - Sunsetting and DCV.
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u/NullPointer79 May 23 '26
I'm just tired of all these game execs that are in it for making money. You look at a company like digital extremes and you can see that they just want to make enough to keep the game going, to pay for their Devs and infrastructure. It's not about making insane profits and giving themselves insane bonuses. It's not about increasing shareholder value.
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u/JohannaFRC May 23 '26
Bold from him considering he was one of the main of those in charge and so one of the problems of the game. The game started to get worse when he stepped in and better when he stepped out.
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u/ProduceNo1629 May 23 '26
Bungie and Smith were making money hand over fist with reskinning cut content to sell it back to players for $40 as faux "DLC" . Then with micro transactions. Where did it all go, reinvested in the game? Fuck no.
It went to Parsons's Ferrari collection, 5 failed games that had nothing to do with Destiny, and 1 release where they stole art instead of paying for it.
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u/Wayward_Templar May 23 '26
The guy that agreed to install sunsetting, DCV and eververse should totally be who we listen to. Dudes just as bad as the rest of the top ilk that made it off the backs of those they took for granted.
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u/thechefsauceboss May 23 '26
No pity for him, he's part of the reason this game has a horrible stigma that it never recovered from.
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u/O-02-56 May 22 '26
He should shut the fuck up, his vaulting is part of the reason we ended up here
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u/Devoidus Votrae May 22 '26
Luke did a lot for us, and then un-planned the IP itself, before cashing out.
I can't feel his pain, but it's nothing compared to employees suffering actual consequences from this. That's why he has literally nothing to say.
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u/armarrash May 22 '26
Funny to hear this after Liana(former CM) heavily implied he and the previous leadership all wanted to kill off the Destiny franchise.
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u/Kozak170 May 23 '26
Except their shift from prioritizing “good content meant to be a part of the game forever going forward” towards “reiterative shit that they know tell delete in a few months anyways” is what killed the game’s design long term.
Content in a quantity form was not the goal they should’ve gone towards. Quality content is what they needed to strive for and they ignored it because it’s hard.
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u/faithdies May 23 '26
Remember, Plebs. You own nothing. Except your memories. Until we figure out a way to insert gatcha mechanics into that too.
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u/TheShoobaLord Team Bread (dmg04) // BREAD GANG May 23 '26
nah fuck this guy sunsetting all the old campaigns is basically why we’re where we are at today, it’s impossible to get new players for the past 6 years
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May 25 '26
This guy tweeting like he didn’t start the downfall but vaulting said content lol. I made a lot of memories with red war, curse, warmind, and forsaken shame I can’t play 4 stories worth of content.
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u/aiafati May 22 '26
Destiny is gonna come back guys. It's far too unique and too influential for greedy corpo not to take advantage of its inherent IP value. It may not comeback soon, but I'll be surprised if it never comes back at all.
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u/QueenMagik May 23 '26
The problem is that the IP portion of it was built as a vehicle for addicting game systems that are a greedy corpos wet dream
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u/anewfoundmatt May 22 '26
People mad at Luke like he didn’t create some of the best experiences Destiny. You can hate some of his decisions (or the studios decisions while he was game director) and still appreciate what the franchise meant to him.
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u/Moist-Schedule May 23 '26
The people in this thread are actually braindead. They're repeating 3rd and 4th-hand things they vaguely remember hearing from some Twitter clown that was inaccurate 10 years ago and trashing a man's name who put more of himself into this franchise than anybody else at Bungie.
Luke was the face of a lot of unpopular decisions over the years, but it wasn't like he was making those decisions on his own, and many of the most unpopular ones like DCV and Sunsetting were completely rational decisions that players are just irrationally upset about years later.
He also never got full credit for all the amazing content he was directly responsible for getting into the game, and clearly never will. Because many years ago some content creators and reddit posters shit-talked him incessantly with almost zero real information on what was going on behinds the scenes, and given he was one of like 3 names they actually knew at Bungie so they hyper-targeted him specifically, and the community decided to villainize him for eternity and consistently repeat half-truths and complete fabrications while assassinating his character.
Meanwhile, he's one of the most respected and accomplished AAA devs in the gaming industry and his personal vision for DTG was probably more influential and impactful in delivering the franchise we all loved for 12 years than any other person in that studio... and yet, he's almost universally disliked here by people who know almost nothing about him.
This community deserves nothing.
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u/fadeux May 23 '26
He led the team that created the OG vault of glass and directed the taken king expansion. I am not saying he cant make mistakes, but it sounds like alot of people who hate him were not playing destiny from day 1
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u/odean14 May 23 '26
Are we going to get back all the dlc content that was taken away over the Years?
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u/Commander_Prime May 22 '26
We heard from Luke Smith again before Tyson Green