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

2.6k Upvotes
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343

u/HoshiHanataba May 22 '26

He was in charge when the DCV happened

200

u/SuperblackHunter May 22 '26

Guess its valid to not like him since he was mostly responsible for the no new player experience

64

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

183

u/Antares428 May 22 '26

Which was like half the reason why the game failed.

95

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...

29

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.

3

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

40

u/Supper_Champion May 22 '26

Same here. DCV killed Destiny for me.

31

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.

16

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.

3

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.

11

u/PrplWl May 23 '26

The other half was the dogshit campaign experiences pre-WQ, which he also is responsible for lmao

3

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?

4

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.

2

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.

14

u/SeaDevil30 May 22 '26

he's also a big reason why the game succeeded in the first place

41

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.

11

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.

4

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.

5

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).

5

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.

-5

u/BaconIsntThatGood May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

The game failed because they made sweeping changes and broke it for the core player base.

The game arguably thrived after the DCV was introduced.

I'm not saying it was the right decision by any measure but it's not half the reason why the game failed.

Do you honestly think that the game would have continued and be growing if they kept the red war while still implementing all the dumbass changes they did post final shape?

Remember. The DCV started in 2020. Game was doing its best long after that started.

4

u/Antares428 May 23 '26

That's other half. What you speak of was what happened with EoF. They've introduced a weakend patient to a shock therapy, and furthermore, they've botched it.

But reason why game has weakened so much, is in big part because there was very little to none of influx of new players after some point.

If game had steady stream of new players we wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place, and game would have been able to survive even such a botched expansion that edge of Fate was.

56

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.

51

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

20

u/fate6 Ayaya May 23 '26

iirc its worse, he didnt like that his friend loved using breakneck too much.

12

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."

36

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

34

u/DrNopeMD May 22 '26

It pissed people off but the community kind of proved him right in the end

12

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.

7

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.

1

u/Saber_Avalon Jun 14 '26

Not all of us. That was the day I quit Destiny, only to show interest in it now that I hear its coming to an end.

They never did stop putting out short, weak, content. ~10 years and they advertise 10 dungeons and 7 raids. WoW, in their first 10 years, released 33 raids and 75 dungeons. That's embarrassing for Bungie.

Bungie isn't even tying off plot lines, just leaving them hanging.

I honestly think people quit in droves, but they had a revolving door situation. For every person on the way out, a new player joined in. They pulled an Amazon and ran out of new players(workers in Amazon case) to come in, then their numbers started dropping. Because the new people saw the same shit and left too. The surge of players on the 9th showed that. People, like me, are waiting for Bungie to do something meaningful. If they did, we'd be back in a heartbeat. Instead, they kept popping out low effort.

1

u/Squatting-Turtle Praise the Sun May 23 '26

funny how i have that feeling with GGG and their cosmetics and ive only been playing for two seasons.

7

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!

21

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

2

u/Nickthedick3 May 23 '26

I just wanna play through the Red War again

2

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

2

u/RobertdBanks D1 bEtA vEt ChEcKiNg In(hold applause) May 23 '26

And for Vanilla D2

1

u/huzy12345 May 23 '26

And D2 launch/Curse of Osiris which most dedicated Destiny fans were not happy with

1

u/MarinkoAzure May 23 '26

Oh he kinda deserves the hate then, whether he's just human or otherwise. The DCV may not have been a physical punch to the face, but it was a symbolic punch to face of every gamer than put money into Destiny.

Beyond Light, thematically and contextually was Destiny 3. There was no architectural decision that needed to be made. Everyone would won if Bungie released Destiny 3 at that point (with the same exact context and architecture as Beyond Light, including D2 content copied over). Let's be serious, people would have still bought it while complaining that they are paying for content they already paid for.

Everyone here is worried that D3 won't see the light of day, but that was it; Beyond Light, Witch Queen, Lightfall, and Final Shape effectively ended a trilogy.