After two top talents have already left Bungie in recent weeks, Destiny 2 now has more high-profile departures to report.
More departures at Bungie: Although personnel changes are nothing unusual in the gaming industry, some fans of Destiny 2 are still worried.
Because more familiar faces in important positions have left the studio. Just recently, the sandbox designers and balancing experts Josh Hamrick and Jon Weisnewski left.
These developers have now left Bungie
In total, three developers have recently left the studio.
Who is it about? The most notable departure is probably former raid design lead Joe Blackburn. He announced his last day at Bungie on April 26. He was promoted to design lead of Destiny 2 only a few months ago.
In the community, Blackburn was very popular. He was significantly responsible for the direction and design of the Destiny 2 raids such as Last Wish and served as the spokesperson for the raid team in numerous live streams and ViDocs.
Simultaneously with Blackburn, another key developer has left – senior writer of Destiny 2, Jill Scharr. She has been responsible for the story and lore of the game for over 4 years.
A few days ago, it was revealed that Claude Jerome, who was seen in several live streams and ViDocs for Forsaken and the Annual Pass, has also left the studio.
He was employed as a staff gameplay designer at Bungie and was responsible for combat design, among other things. Although there wasn’t a tweet or official message, his Twitter profile states in the description “…formerly at Bungie…”.
Why the departures? Such personnel changes are common in this industry. However, due to the separation between Bungie and Activision, many fans are nervous and see the numerous departures of late as a bad sign.
The community has its own theories. Some suspect that the developers in Destiny 2 or due to the separation from Activision see no future and are looking for something else. Others speculate that some of these people may have fallen victim to the restructuring at Bungie.
Others emphasize that it is common in developer circles to dedicate oneself to new projects after a certain time. Additionally, the work on the content of the Annual Pass for year 2 is now almost complete. Developers often use reaching such milestones to begin new career chapters.
And at least in the case of Joe Blackburn, this seems to actually be the case. He openly contradicted the numerous conspiracy theories and statements like “Crisis at Bungie”. He justified his departure with a great new opportunity that has now opened up for him in Santa Monica.
Although Blackburn did not get more specific, numerous high-profile developer studios are based in Santa Monica – including
- Sony Santa Monica
- Riot Games
- Treyarch
- or Naughty Dog
How the other two departures, Jerome and Scharr, will fare is currently hard to assess. However, Claude Gerome has retweeted a lot of things from the Sony Santa Monica Studio. Some fans therefore assume that he might possibly be settling at Sony.
