The online shooter Destiny 2 is currently in a crisis, with player numbers dwindling. But such a crisis already occurred in 2016: back then, the long-time head of Bungie, Harold Ryan, had to leave. He founded a new studio with former Bungie employees. They promised great AAA games. What is the status of the studio “Probably Monsters” in 2023, and can we expect an alternative to Destiny 2 from this direction?
What was it like back then?
- In 2016, Destiny 1 was in a crisis: it became clear that they could not meet the master plan of Activision Blizzard to release two DLCs and new installments of Destiny annually. Destiny 2 had just been rebooted, and DLCs were canceled for 2016.
- After 16 years as CEO, Harold Ryan had to leave Bungie and founded a new company, “Probably Monsters”, right in Seattle: many former Destiny employees switched to him. The name came from the fact that employees of the company could respond to the question of what they were working on with “Probably working on monsters”.
- The idea of the company was to provide a “roof” that would manage organization and management while teams would work on large AAA games under their own “creative leads”. At that time, it was considered a strong idea; apparently, Ryan had just been “damaged by Activision Blizzard” and wanted to offer creative people a better environment.
Those were the days, Destiny 1:
This is how the new company was set up: Probably Monsters focused on three teams:
- The Cauldron team was working on a “single-player, adventure-driven game” that was supposed to develop with and around players. The team consisted of former developers from Destiny and God of War. However, this project seems to have already been discontinued.
- The Battle Barge team was formed by former employees of Borderlands and Torchlight. They are developing an open-world co-op RPG.
- The Firewalk team was supposed to develop AAA multiplayer games.
A team is sold to Sony, introduces a new PvP shooter
Is there already a game from them? Indirectly, yes. The team “Firewalk” has now been sold to Sony. They showcased their game “Concord” in May 2023.
This is a PvP multiplayer shooter set to be released for PS5 and PC in 2024.
Lots of money from investors and new employees came
This was the highlight so far: Besides the sale of Firewalk in 2023, the company “Probably Monsters” also had further successes to report in 2021 and 2022:
- In a funding round in 2021, the studio raised 200 million US dollars from various investors (via Forbes).
- A financial report stated that they had set a minimum salary of $77,000 and were heavily focused on remote work. It was said that the company had grown by 65% in 2022 (via businesswire).
2023 was a year of setbacks
What setbacks have occurred so far? In June 2023, it was announced that the debut project of the “Cauldron” team had to be canceled. Apparently, they saw too much competition in the market for the single-player game (via geekwire).
It was said that they wanted to retain the team, but a few months later, in September 2023, the news came that Probably Monsters had laid off some employees (via geekwire). The exact number of laid-off employees is unknown; a request by GeekWire for a statement on the layoffs was declined.
It can be assumed that the layoffs mainly affected the Cauldron team, including the former Destiny employees.
Is a Destiny alternative coming from Harold Ryan? It does not seem so; Probably Monsters is not developing anything in the direction of Destiny. What might have been the closest alternative to Destiny, the FPS shooter Concord, has been sold to Sony, along with Firewalk.
The project of the Destiny developers apparently suffered a setback and was canceled.
The game that the former employees of Borderlands and Torchlight are building sounds like a completely different game.
Anyone who hoped that the former Destiny employees would soon deliver an alternative to the struggling multiplayer shooter will likely be disappointed. Even after so many years, there seems to be no real alternative on the horizon. Ubisoft has announced The Division 3, but that is still a long way off.
While Probably Monsters has apparently collected a lot of money and employees in the last 7 years, they have not revealed anything truly noteworthy so far. The development of such large projects takes a long time, and they have apparently spent many years initially working on structures and project ideas.
More on the current situation with Destiny 2:
