Bungie - "We need to dispel the notion Activision was some prohibitive overlord"

Bungie's year started off with a bang as the company announced an end to its partnership with Activision in January, with the studio taking over all publishing responsibilities on the Destiny franchise.

Some of the big changes made since then, like the migration from Activision Blizzard's Battle.net to Steam, are clearly related to that move. Others, like the impending rollout of a free-to-play "baseline" version of Destiny 2, are less clearly linked.

Speaking with Eurogamer at Gamescom, Bungie communications director David Dague downplayed the suggestion of a tie between them.

"I think we need to dispel the notion Activision was some prohibitive overlord that wasn't letting us do awesome things," Dague said. "We launched this franchise with Activision, naturally and over the course of time we both decided we had different goals for what we wanted it to be, so we both went our separate ways. It was amicable, and here we are making this game on our own, doing what we think we need to do to make it awesome."

In short, Dague said the split with Activision hasn't had much of an impact on how the core development team works.

"Day to day on the development side, things aren't that different, really," he said. "It's at places like Gamescom where we come into contact with our publishing team, our new Bungie teammates in foreign markets working on Destiny, where we're still wrapping our arms around this global community. But in terms of the decision making, our creative leads are still calling the shots like they always were on what they want the game to be.

"We want to make the best game we can make and the longer we make it the better we understand the people who play it. So if Bungie seems different these days, it's in us gaining a better understanding of what Destiny is, why it's valuable to players and where we want to take it."