One of the most important and disturbing recent events in the gaming industry was the sudden and shocking end of Destiny 2with developer Bungie announcing its completion in May before delivering one final content update, Monument of Triumph, in early June. Despite the players pushing to keep the series alivepublisher Sony finally ended support for Destiny 2 (although it remains playable) and fired “most of the Destiny team” shortly after.
The downfall of a franchise as massive and prominent as Destiny, supposedly caused by bad leadership and financial problems – was a bombshell for many, including Rebecca Ford, creative director of war frame. 2013 live action sci-fi RPG from Digital Extremes, one of Destiny 2of its biggest rivals, has now survived… but Ford isn’t celebrating.
Instead, see the end of Destiny 2 and the shape he ended, being deeply worrying: “It’s horrible news, because it shows that even if you care so much, the business side of this industry always gets the last word,” he said. GamesRadar+ during an interview at TennoCon 2026.
“Those are the kinds of stories and experiences that, when you’re in a position where you have your own game, your own intellectual property, and you work as hard as you do on it… that’s not the first time it’s happened, and it’s going to happen again, where the business side of the video game economy makes the decision for you, and it’s existentially threatening on every level, because the idea that we’re not in charge of our own goodbye is something I wake up thinking about every day,” he continued.
While this isn’t something private and independent studios need to worry about, these types of shutdowns, layoffs, and shutdowns are certainly things that developers operating under the wing of a publisher have come to increasingly fear in recent years.
Just look at the events of last week in xbox for an obvious example of why; Microsoft’s gaming brand began a series of 3,200 ongoing layoffswith 1,600 workers made redundant immediately and another 1,600 to be made redundant over the course of 12 months. Four studios are being sold Xbox game studios too, and that number could increase to five depending on how negotiations over Arkane Lyon develop with the French government.
As a result of what Xbox calls a “reset” for an “unhealthy” operation, more than half of DOOM software dev id and More than 200 developers at ZeniMax Online Studios, creator of The Elder Scrolls Online have been discharged, and many other Xbox devices were also affected. Bethesda workers I fear The Elder Scrolls 6 will be delayed and so? Fallout 76 support may not continuewhile your union fights back with a Save Our Devs protest this week.
The cuts at Xbox and Bungie are simply the latest in a devastating series of industry layoffs that have continued to pile up since 2022initiated by excessive investment in games during the pandemic and worsened by the impact of rateshe hardware crisisand other socioeconomic factors.
In an era where publishers laying off thousands of developers and canceling or shutting down projects has become disturbingly routine, Ford is right to see what happened with Destiny and Bungie as a grim reminder of the current state of the industry. We can only hope that a light at the end of the tunnel is not too far away.
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