Bungie’s former General Counsel says Sony forced the studio “to fix the things that were wrong with their game”

Bungie’s former chief in-house lawyer, Don McGowan, reckons it’s a good thing that Sony is “inflicting some discipline” on the Destiny 2 studio, and helping management “run the game like a business.”

“To be clear: I’m not talking about the layoffs, I’m talking about forcing them to get their heads out of their asses and focus on things like: implementing a method of new player acquisition; not just doing fan service for the fans in the Bungie C-suite; and running the game like a business,” McGowan said on LinkedIn.

“Good. I still have friends in that environment and I’d like them to keep jobs.”

“This is the future I thought the company should embrace after the Sony acquisition: a studio, not an ‘independent company’,” McGowan added.

“But there were a lot of egos for whom it was important to pretend that ‘nothing would change’. I remember sitting there during the deal saying, ‘do you think Sony describes this as them getting to pay $3.6 billion for the right to have ‘no input into what Bungie does?’ That was exactly what a lot of people thought.

“I guess they’ve been given cause to understand that that’s not how things work. Good. The changes described in this article are the things you do to run a franchise, not to keep making the game you and your friends have mastered, or to chase trends.”

The article McGowan referenced outlines the changes Bungie is introducing to its tentpole Destiny series, including switching to two medium expansions a year.

“Much though it pains me to say this, it appears that Sony’s inflicting some discipline on my former colleagues may have forced them to fix the things that were wrong with their game,” McGowan added.

Before his tenure as General Counsel at Bungie, McGowan was Chief Legal Officer at Pokémon, and before that, he spent four years on Microsoft’s legal team.

Last week, Bungie “resolved” a plagiarism accusation after an artist accused the studio of lifting their alternative design of an “iconic” Destiny 2 weapon.