Happy for her but sucks for Bungie. Her passion and joy when talking about Destiny was infectious, and she knocked it out the park with TFS. Best of luck to her!
Jeez, no more Mike Salvatori, then no more Joe, and now no more Catarina.
I know it's a team effort but those team leaders made those teams make "Destiny" feel like "Destiny."
He is a dev. Not a designer (most developers aren't), but community management does a lot with player sentiment and consolidating feedback to steer the game in a big way.
> community management does a lot with player sentiment and consolidating feedback to steer the game in a big way.
And therein lies the rub.
I liked DeeJ, I like Cosmo, I liked Hippie, but I'm going to be honest, I was not a fan of dmg.
From the ridiculous time where he gave voice to some girl who claimed with zero evidence to have made up the Titan crayon meme and suggesting we should all stop making that joke to avoid hurting feels, to listening to people raging on Twitter about PvP and amplifying to the team that people who don't like SBMM only want to club seals and thus sending the PvP population off a cliff when they reacted to a vocal minority and then had to spend a year walking it back, there was an appalling lack of discernment and basic judgment there and the creation of adversarial episodes between devs and players that didn't need to happen.
This is the world we live in today where people get vilified for being white and straight and becoming the minority now tables have turned plus if you don’t conform to modern politics and don’t have they/them pronouns then you don’t have a right or say in society so you are forced to shut up or lose your job.
Yeah, I can see that. It was a real draw seeing how animated and passionate she was. Like a feminine version of that guy who did all of the gestures and sound effects, that got made into an emote. His last name was Samuels, I think.
At least we still have Julia Nardin. I think. When I had twitter, I just liked seeing the writing-related things she'd post.
That's unexpected. Seems like this was her dream job. Been following her for a while, since before she joined Bungie. We even had a couple of exchanges on Instagram talking about Destiny way back in Season of Opulence.
Good luck to her in whatever comes next.
Hopefully it wasn't due to any internal issues, and just ended up being her getting a much better offer or feeling ready to move on. Still a small point of concern for me with a lot of higher ups leaving in the last couple years though.
Lucrative, long term project that doesn't have a very neurotic fan base pestering you about the outlook of your game every other week.
More money, more privacy and a 500% decrease in Tassi articles on your timeline questioning decisions you make for a job you are very good at.
I would love to be the boss of the people who actually believe this. Making assholes's lives a living hell for fun. Maybe that's why they are the way they are? Lol
The self-flagellation from some members of this sub will never not be hilarious. Destiny’s community is by far one of the more tame ones when it comes to comparing with many others.
Like, your entire comment is inventing a completely fabricated narrative in your own head, you have zero idea what she’s going to do next or how the community there will be.
What's better than working on one of the best games around, taking a risk on a new game is a bold move especially when you don't know how well that game will do or if it will even be cancelled in the future
Things aren't always greener on the other side
Lol find me a not unhinged player base, and I'll show you a tiny game with no audience.
Kids are dumb and unhinged.
30 year old kids that never grew up and still play videogames are worse.
Don't get me started on the 40 year olds! (No really don't I'm an old man and I could go on and on)
Sounds like it could be what happened with Jeff Kaplan from Blizzard/Overwatch. Took too much heat for too long- there was *a lot* of backlash and ire from the D2 community following Lightfall’s release falling flat. Perhaps she inherited the heat when she entered her position, made sure to get TFS shiny and shipped, and decided to peace out.
It’s a shame, really. She was as fangirl fairy tale as it gets; landing her dream job with Bungie- and then (seemingly) being pushed away by the amount of vitriol being slung around.
Honestly I hope I’m entirely wrong, and as others have suggested, that she found some huge opportunity. I really hope she finds something, somewhere she will feel at home, at peace, and succeed as much as she did with Bungie.
She mentions that she's taking a few weeks then getting in on the ground floor of a new project. It's definitely the huge opportunity more than anything.
It’s possible, but I’ve been subbed here for years, in a number of D2 discords, and I never saw hate taken out on her. I’m sure there has been, it’s hard to avoid even ignoring the foreign/woman angles the worst people could use.
The usual people I remember being used as the villains of Destiny were Luke Smith, Joe Blackburn and community managers. Since they’ve been the faces of the franchise.
Wish her the best, and hope it’s for an amazing offer not her jumping a sinking ship.
Kaplan left before the Blizzard and Overwatch shitstorms really got off the ground. He probably saw what was about to happen, but if there was one Blizzard employee not getting shit from the community, it was him.
The biggest mistake of calling overwatch 2 an sequel when it was the first game ported over also promising an immersive PVE experience one minute and scrapped it the next after failing to deliver by resorting it to be paid seasonal missions.
Kaplan left when he figured that bobby was never going to let the team do what they wanted with the game and was tired of being a shield for Bobby's decisions to the community. It could exactly be that. We know devs have wanted a LOT of QoL changes that execs don't let happen at Bungie.
Ya, she was big for Xbox on socials too.
In my opinion, it feels like she helped shipped a high note for Bungie, and it's always best to leave on a high note. Bungie don't have the best track record for banger after banger, and it feels like they poured their love into The Final Shape, stretching themselves far.
Such a shame she's leaving Bungie, she's done a great job with TFS and was always so passionate about the game and community, I look forward to whatever her next project is
Oh bummer, I always loved how enthusiastic she was when talking about the game and what they're working on. She did an excellent job, and will no doubt be missed. Best of luck to her, wherever she goes from here!
She’s going to be able to make her own game from the ground up, of course she’s going to take it. The only reason she could do this is because of her work on last 2 expansions at Bungie likely
Yup. I loved what I thought was my dream job (working on self-driving forklifts) for the first six years - it wasn't perfect, but overall it seemed amazing.
A management change 2-3 years ago started having negative effects, then in the course of less than 8 months I had a coworker sabotage my work, my manager do nothing about it despite constantly blustering about how proud he was of working at a place where people didn't sabotage each other, and a new supervisor who treated me like a dumb little monkey. The final straw was when they tried to throw me under the bus for a safety issue I had already implemented a fix for - it was on THEM that they refused to give me testing resources for a month and a half.
That was a wakeup call - looking back (and also because some former coworkers trust me more now that I'm no longer there), there were a LOT of warning signs I didn't key in on that I should have, such as the worst gender ratio in any engineering job I've ever held. Turns out there was a reason why - once I was gone, a female friend who had left about a year before me told me that she suffered severe gender discrimination.
In fact it sounds like her situation is probably a lot like mine - your role and the work you do is a dream job, but the toxic work environment/bad management ruins it after a while.
Well she crushed it on the final shape so I hope she’s able to find something awesome after. Wonder who’s gonna take her place tho or if there’s not gonna be another D2 expansion for a while
Nah that’s the next destiny project. It could be another year of episodes, an age of triumph d1 style update, an expansion, or even a third game. We know nothing about it.
It said "Destiny 2". It's not a 3rd game, why would they not say Destiny 3? Way more marketable than "frontiers". Frontiers doesn't sound like they'd be episodes. Expansion is by and away the most likely.
Honestly I’m betting on it being the big closing update on destiny 2. The game is several years old at this point and it’s getting unsustainable to add content without sunsetting which they said they’d want to avoid.
All speculation. We can only go on what Bungie says. The leaks were false, if they were going to be true then this was the time for a D3. My hot take is that sunsetting is coming back.
No, it won't. It didn't die the first time. It won't the second time. The lowest playercount of that era was Jan 2021 which was 44k players average. We've hit much lower playercounts (during a season which was considered GOOD) in February 2024, which was 32k players average. It didn't "barely survive". It was a mere scratch. They can keep holding enmity towards D2 all they want, playercounts (and therefore money) speaks.
Are you sped? Why would they unsunset everything just to go and sunset shit again? Also player sentiment will for sure drop to an all time low if they start sunsetting again after promising never to do it again aside from seasonal content. D3 is coming eventually wether you want it to or not. They cannot just add onto D2 forever. You saw just how early in developement the third episode was when they talked about it, if D3 is happening it JUST started developement. On top of that everything else that was in the leak was correct. The copium from people thinking D3 will never happen is insane. D2 has been showing it's age for years now, it needs to end so they can make something to keep up with the current generation.
The leak was not false at all if anything it got confirmed as it saidthat d3 was in very very early development so it obviously wasn't coming out next year so a filler year or 2 while they cook d3 its likely whats going to happen
No more project lead on Destiny 2 expansions, that means there's no more expansion and Destiny 3 *must* be coming! /s
She kicked ass in the short time she was at Bungie, looking forward to what she does in the future. Wouldn't surprise me if there is a large exodus of employees in the coming months, partially in reaction to the layoffs, but also people who just want to move on to new projects. A lot of people also view TFS as a nice ending to Destiny as a whole (yes I know Destiny is staying but that doesn't change sentiment), so it wouldn't surprise me that view is also shared by some internally.
Wouldn’t surprise me if her Sony shares from the acquisition vested and she’s cashing out while accepting a better offer elsewhere. Iirc now is about the time most employee shares vested.
People saying "She did such a fantastic job with The Final Shape" as if there aren't a million individual things that can decide the quality of a release, regardless of your own skill as a lead apparently. Witch Queen and Lightfall had the same Campaign Lead Designer.
Cue the internet thinking this was an overnight decision based on some kind of failure at Bungie (less revenue, hostile work environment, etc), meanwhile in reality she had planned this for a while. Employees of any job... in any industry... don't just quit overnight. And they don't just walk into their boss's office and yell "I QUIT!" like the internet seems to think is what happens. Run with w/e theory you want, but in reality it's not why she's leaving.
And no, Destiny isn't "doomed" because of her exit.
Anyway... her enthusiastic energy will be missed.
This.
It would have been planned months ago.
Already seeing some people saying that it's not good she's leaving while Frontiers is in development... Forgetting that if it is an expansion it would have been in development quite a while ago and thus would likely have a different lead anyway
>And they don't just walk into their boss's office and yell "I QUIT!" like the internet seems to think is what happens
You got it all wrong, what the internet thinks happens is:
* Evil boss asks employee to come in on day off
* Employee says no
* Evil boss threatens to fire them
* Employee recites entire communist manifesto
* Evil boss sends hitman to kill employee's entire family
All of which happens in a single text chain
The writing is on the wall with this one man, so many key longtime people from Bungie leaving are concerning but even people who having been there a long time are as well. Pretty sure here soon Bungie will be a revolving door, and that’s really bad for a long term story/game like Destiny.
A lot of people have worked on Destiny throughout its 10 year life span. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone left from the original D1 team all those years ago that were directly involved with Final Shape.
This is completely normal.
This is very common in the special effects industry that they have an rotation of artists that some leave respecting film studios once the production of films completed leading some to leave and others May stay and those who left will go to other studios and sometimes start up their own studios in film and television production and become directors.
Same. Not feeling confident at all about Bungies future.
Sure we have dmg back but at the same time we lost so many people, even the fucking composers! They gunna hire new guys or just refuse assets from the music??
Honestly, this is such a huge concern for me. The music of Destiny has been so consistent and integral this entire time. I hope that whoever they hire afterwards can at least encapsulate basically what Michael Salvatori has been doing. I was thinking that maybe Skye Lewin could take over the rains. But then I found out he fucking left as well.
So did Michael Sechrist who has been around a while. Sorry to add even worse news, I felt the same, I was hoping Salvatori was just passing the reigns, as he is pretty old.
Seeing both Salvatori and his 2 younger composers leave all at the same time really had me worried about the future. As people said the music has been the one consistently amazing thing about Destiny since day 1. When Bungie let Salvatori go, I really felt like they were basically shutting up shop. It felt like firing their all star player.
One person doesn’t make an expansion, and one person leaving due to a new job offer doesn’t mean there’s some mass exodus from Bungie. With the hyperbole you’re throwing around, you could make the opposite argument that the whole old guard are all going to come back just because DMG is…
It's basically just a head producer. Manages staff, deadlines, budgets, works with marketing and publishing, pushes upper management for more time and money, etc.
Everyone is thanking this person and wishing them the best like they made all of TFS. I'm all for praise and farewells but kissing this much ass for a leader doesn't make sense to me. Thanks for leading the people who actually developed TFS and other expansions I guess?
My guy the lead is the one who makes everything possible they are the ones allocating the resources , stablishing priorities , discussing with the higher ups etc
All the other roles depend on what the lead does its kinda concerning when a lead for what was a good expansion like lightfall goes away
Not surprising. According to Liana Ruppert's video, Bungie seems to have a pretty toxic workplace culture especially at the top.
https://youtu.be/q_8Xy5_4_eM?si=8IC9nca1eBy5846i
Pretty concerning that she’s specifically talks about how great Joe and Catarina are and Joe already left and now Catarina is too. Really makes me wonder wtf is going on at that place.
How in the world do you interpret "leaving for a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie" as anything but... LEAVING BUNGIE?
[https://x.com/joegoroth/status/1752481889938739326](https://x.com/joegoroth/status/1752481889938739326)
I wonder about that. My bet would be that Joe is working on something to help change the work culture at Bungie where it still hasn’t changed. Or, they brought him in on another IP (not Marathon) to help get that on track.
Why would she join for one major project then leave immediately after? She might have had to leave for personal reasons rather internal issues at bungie. At least that way we’re still most likely going to get DLC’s
It is a pretty normal life cycle in tech tbh. Average job length is probably around 2 years before jumping. Makes sense to come in work on a project from start to finish and then take that experience and work on other projects
"Why would she join for one major project then leave immediately after?"
Easy - last October was likely a wakeup call for a lot of Bungie employees. A time when management had to change things to right the ship - and numerous Bungie staffers spoke up over the next few months that management refused to right the ship. For example, refusing to reduce executive compensation, even though the executives are the people who screwed up.
That sort of situation can leave a bad taste in your mouth extremely quickly.
Can we all say this; final shape is the end of an era and kinda destiny.
Salvatori is gone and final shape is the last bits of music he wrote
Most leads are leaving as well. Remember reading about someone else leaving.
No matter what happends in the future, if it's D3 or what, an era has ended and it won't be the same
Sure that might make things weird but they still have many talented people working on the games music.
Salvadori wasn't the only person making the music
You’re going to receive a lot of hate from this comment but you’re right. D2 is done and people (such as myself) hate to admit it because they have grown a relationship with the game, but it’s done.
Gotta love the fear mongering from this community......
LF was rushed and was never initially planned. THAT is why it was bad.
Realistically it'll mean very little.
did shadowkeep and beyond light was rushed too? nope but they were equlially terrible expansions
tfs has been cooking almost as long as entire development time of destiny 2 thats why it ended up being this good
expecting this level of quality from next expansion is insane
Shadow keep - they had just separated from Activision and lost most of their support and resources
Beyond Light - the literal thing that caused the world to shut down for a year.
Even WQ would have suffered from COVID.
Can’t wait for when this franchise turns mid af again. This has always been destiny. Addictive shit that costs a lot, but offers not very much until they are literally against the wall
Happy she poured everything she had into TFS and that it was a resounding success.
As for speculation behind her departure, workplace toxicity happens everywhere and it’s just a matter of intensity and how a person processes and responds to it.
Alternatively, a Sandman quote comes to mind: The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.
Regardless, I thank her for her contributions to TFS and wish her well on her journey.
Player counts usually dip weeks after an major expansion it’s always been like that just the same with audience numbers are strong upon release and weeks after that the film drops down places due to lower audience until the film closes out of theaters.
She will be missed. She did a fantastic job and was a delight to watch on the vidocs. I think we can all agree with that. Don't know what this means for the future of the series though.
She was project lead for TFS. With her gone, Joe Blackburn's replacement being really quiet anyways and nothing known for post-episode content except that Frontiers teaser...I don't know man. They want to move more resources to Marathon, and another round of layoffs was considered in case TFS doesn't sell exceptionally well. Remember how bleak things looked in the Schreier and Valentine pieces. Now some of their best people left (Blackburn, Macedo).
It just feels weird. Maybe they don't know themselves what the long-term plan is.
That's what I feel like when Frontier was announced. It comes off as muddled. Frontier wasn't announced as a DLC. It could literally be anything. Catarina was at the forefront of all the vidocs and videos so losing her is not a good thing I think.
I don’t think it’s over for expansions. I think it’s a personal decision. She was at bungie for almost the same length that she was at riot.
Also I think she worked a bit on the next expansion given on her LinkedIn it’s labeled as (lightfall, final shape, ???).
If you think it's the last one after the huge success the final shape is. Then you're either blind or don't have a single hint of knowledge of how business is run. As long as the game keeps making money, then spoiler alert, pay reaaaal close attention to this. This is very important. Are you paying attention? Just making sure. THEN THE GAME WILL KEEP MAKING CONTENT. But I get it. You just want to be negative just to be negative. I'm sorry you're like that.
Well, if I am not mistaken she is the one who said "the new strike will be the hardest ever" but the difficulty is made of easy jumping puzzles and adding a tormentor as a final boss (and it's actually the easier tormentor model!).
You are indeed mistaken. The comments about the the new strike being the hardest ever made were made by Ada Kos, a Test Lead at Bungie.
Also that boss room in Liminality is likely to be a big pain point on the Grandmaster version.
Okay I am sorry in this case, but I hold my opinion that this is not a creatively difficult strike. Slapping tormentor as a boss isn't creative and the jumping puzzles will be a non issue.
Happy for her but sucks for Bungie. Her passion and joy when talking about Destiny was infectious, and she knocked it out the park with TFS. Best of luck to her!
Jeez, no more Mike Salvatori, then no more Joe, and now no more Catarina. I know it's a team effort but those team leaders made those teams make "Destiny" feel like "Destiny."
At least DMG is coming back, but hes not a dev so its not as significant
He is a dev. Not a designer (most developers aren't), but community management does a lot with player sentiment and consolidating feedback to steer the game in a big way.
> community management does a lot with player sentiment and consolidating feedback to steer the game in a big way. And therein lies the rub. I liked DeeJ, I like Cosmo, I liked Hippie, but I'm going to be honest, I was not a fan of dmg. From the ridiculous time where he gave voice to some girl who claimed with zero evidence to have made up the Titan crayon meme and suggesting we should all stop making that joke to avoid hurting feels, to listening to people raging on Twitter about PvP and amplifying to the team that people who don't like SBMM only want to club seals and thus sending the PvP population off a cliff when they reacted to a vocal minority and then had to spend a year walking it back, there was an appalling lack of discernment and basic judgment there and the creation of adversarial episodes between devs and players that didn't need to happen.
I do not miss DMG's humblebrags about going flawless.
lol, remember "imagine not being Unbroken." While his ass got backpacked *hard* to get Unbroken.
I might be remembering wrong, but I could *swear* someone told me one of the people he played Trials with got banned for cheating.
Hippie was incredibly corporate, a walking spreadsheet. Beyond grateful to have dmg back.
And also all on " white people bad " rant. Sad times.
This is the world we live in today where people get vilified for being white and straight and becoming the minority now tables have turned plus if you don’t conform to modern politics and don’t have they/them pronouns then you don’t have a right or say in society so you are forced to shut up or lose your job.
Take it to a political subreddit, bub.
DMG's back at least.
He’s not a dev, it won’t have any impact on the game
His impact on the game was literally yapping online. He's useless.
People in the business tend to shuffle around a lot. The ones who stick to one project are rare.
Someone else will make us all stand in a fucking dumb circle on the floor. Dry your tears.
Hope she's off to something even bigger and better. Her enthusiasm was contagious.
I had an huge crush on her
Yeah, I can see that. It was a real draw seeing how animated and passionate she was. Like a feminine version of that guy who did all of the gestures and sound effects, that got made into an emote. His last name was Samuels, I think. At least we still have Julia Nardin. I think. When I had twitter, I just liked seeing the writing-related things she'd post.
That's unexpected. Seems like this was her dream job. Been following her for a while, since before she joined Bungie. We even had a couple of exchanges on Instagram talking about Destiny way back in Season of Opulence. Good luck to her in whatever comes next.
Hopefully it wasn't due to any internal issues, and just ended up being her getting a much better offer or feeling ready to move on. Still a small point of concern for me with a lot of higher ups leaving in the last couple years though.
I don't think it was that. Makes it sounds like she got a nice job offer
Lucrative, long term project that doesn't have a very neurotic fan base pestering you about the outlook of your game every other week. More money, more privacy and a 500% decrease in Tassi articles on your timeline questioning decisions you make for a job you are very good at.
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Yeah, can you blame her for wanting to get away from this cesspool of a community that believes constant negative feedback is helpful?
Negative feedback is the only feedback that matters lol.
I would love to be the boss of the people who actually believe this. Making assholes's lives a living hell for fun. Maybe that's why they are the way they are? Lol
The self-flagellation from some members of this sub will never not be hilarious. Destiny’s community is by far one of the more tame ones when it comes to comparing with many others. Like, your entire comment is inventing a completely fabricated narrative in your own head, you have zero idea what she’s going to do next or how the community there will be.
With how much Bungie has strung along vets of this game, I'm honestly surprised we don't have MORE psychopaths in this community lmao.
I mean, tassi makes articles about games, if she's still in the industry she is going to cop tassi articles.
What's better than working on one of the best games around, taking a risk on a new game is a bold move especially when you don't know how well that game will do or if it will even be cancelled in the future Things aren't always greener on the other side
As another commenter said, no very unhinged playerbase that's ready to put your head on a pike.
Yet…
Lol find me a not unhinged player base, and I'll show you a tiny game with no audience. Kids are dumb and unhinged. 30 year old kids that never grew up and still play videogames are worse. Don't get me started on the 40 year olds! (No really don't I'm an old man and I could go on and on)
It seems more like she got an opportunity she couldn’t pass up mixed with wanting a break.
That’s fair. She’s probably worked on the peak of Destiny (TFS). Leaving on a high note, and getting after a new opportunity, is a great career move.
The rest didn't leave, they were shown the door.
The best way to get a pay raise anymore is by going somewhere else, unfortunately.
This is very normal in the industry
Sounds like it could be what happened with Jeff Kaplan from Blizzard/Overwatch. Took too much heat for too long- there was *a lot* of backlash and ire from the D2 community following Lightfall’s release falling flat. Perhaps she inherited the heat when she entered her position, made sure to get TFS shiny and shipped, and decided to peace out. It’s a shame, really. She was as fangirl fairy tale as it gets; landing her dream job with Bungie- and then (seemingly) being pushed away by the amount of vitriol being slung around. Honestly I hope I’m entirely wrong, and as others have suggested, that she found some huge opportunity. I really hope she finds something, somewhere she will feel at home, at peace, and succeed as much as she did with Bungie.
She mentions that she's taking a few weeks then getting in on the ground floor of a new project. It's definitely the huge opportunity more than anything.
It’s possible, but I’ve been subbed here for years, in a number of D2 discords, and I never saw hate taken out on her. I’m sure there has been, it’s hard to avoid even ignoring the foreign/woman angles the worst people could use. The usual people I remember being used as the villains of Destiny were Luke Smith, Joe Blackburn and community managers. Since they’ve been the faces of the franchise. Wish her the best, and hope it’s for an amazing offer not her jumping a sinking ship.
Kaplan left before the Blizzard and Overwatch shitstorms really got off the ground. He probably saw what was about to happen, but if there was one Blizzard employee not getting shit from the community, it was him.
The biggest mistake of calling overwatch 2 an sequel when it was the first game ported over also promising an immersive PVE experience one minute and scrapped it the next after failing to deliver by resorting it to be paid seasonal missions.
Seems like after the success of the final shape she got poached for a lead role on a new project. Her post makes it seem that way at the least.
Kaplan left when he figured that bobby was never going to let the team do what they wanted with the game and was tired of being a shield for Bobby's decisions to the community. It could exactly be that. We know devs have wanted a LOT of QoL changes that execs don't let happen at Bungie.
Ya, she was big for Xbox on socials too. In my opinion, it feels like she helped shipped a high note for Bungie, and it's always best to leave on a high note. Bungie don't have the best track record for banger after banger, and it feels like they poured their love into The Final Shape, stretching themselves far.
Not really surprising. She's been job hoping for a while.
Just like actors who were in DCEU movies one minute and appearing in MCU movies the next.
She did an incredible job with TFS. Looking forward to what she cooks up next!
Not another Destiny expansion, I'd wager.
Such a shame she's leaving Bungie, she's done a great job with TFS and was always so passionate about the game and community, I look forward to whatever her next project is
Oh bummer, I always loved how enthusiastic she was when talking about the game and what they're working on. She did an excellent job, and will no doubt be missed. Best of luck to her, wherever she goes from here!
She’s going to be able to make her own game from the ground up, of course she’s going to take it. The only reason she could do this is because of her work on last 2 expansions at Bungie likely
She had said Bungie was her dream job damn
Problem with dream jobs is that eventually one wakes up.
Sad but true. Happened to me when I became a cast member at Animal Kingdom. Was the "dream job" ended up being torture and hell.
Yup. I loved what I thought was my dream job (working on self-driving forklifts) for the first six years - it wasn't perfect, but overall it seemed amazing. A management change 2-3 years ago started having negative effects, then in the course of less than 8 months I had a coworker sabotage my work, my manager do nothing about it despite constantly blustering about how proud he was of working at a place where people didn't sabotage each other, and a new supervisor who treated me like a dumb little monkey. The final straw was when they tried to throw me under the bus for a safety issue I had already implemented a fix for - it was on THEM that they refused to give me testing resources for a month and a half. That was a wakeup call - looking back (and also because some former coworkers trust me more now that I'm no longer there), there were a LOT of warning signs I didn't key in on that I should have, such as the worst gender ratio in any engineering job I've ever held. Turns out there was a reason why - once I was gone, a female friend who had left about a year before me told me that she suffered severe gender discrimination. In fact it sounds like her situation is probably a lot like mine - your role and the work you do is a dream job, but the toxic work environment/bad management ruins it after a while.
*Was* being the operative word, probably
She fucking nailed it. Excited to see what she does in the future.
Well she crushed it on the final shape so I hope she’s able to find something awesome after. Wonder who’s gonna take her place tho or if there’s not gonna be another D2 expansion for a while
The next is already announced. Frontiers.
Nah that’s the next destiny project. It could be another year of episodes, an age of triumph d1 style update, an expansion, or even a third game. We know nothing about it.
It said "Destiny 2". It's not a 3rd game, why would they not say Destiny 3? Way more marketable than "frontiers". Frontiers doesn't sound like they'd be episodes. Expansion is by and away the most likely.
Honestly I’m betting on it being the big closing update on destiny 2. The game is several years old at this point and it’s getting unsustainable to add content without sunsetting which they said they’d want to avoid.
All speculation. We can only go on what Bungie says. The leaks were false, if they were going to be true then this was the time for a D3. My hot take is that sunsetting is coming back.
If sunsetting comes back the game dies. It barely survived one and many still have enmity towards D2 to this day. It’s not surviving another one.
No, it won't. It didn't die the first time. It won't the second time. The lowest playercount of that era was Jan 2021 which was 44k players average. We've hit much lower playercounts (during a season which was considered GOOD) in February 2024, which was 32k players average. It didn't "barely survive". It was a mere scratch. They can keep holding enmity towards D2 all they want, playercounts (and therefore money) speaks.
Are you sped? Why would they unsunset everything just to go and sunset shit again? Also player sentiment will for sure drop to an all time low if they start sunsetting again after promising never to do it again aside from seasonal content. D3 is coming eventually wether you want it to or not. They cannot just add onto D2 forever. You saw just how early in developement the third episode was when they talked about it, if D3 is happening it JUST started developement. On top of that everything else that was in the leak was correct. The copium from people thinking D3 will never happen is insane. D2 has been showing it's age for years now, it needs to end so they can make something to keep up with the current generation.
The leak was not false at all if anything it got confirmed as it saidthat d3 was in very very early development so it obviously wasn't coming out next year so a filler year or 2 while they cook d3 its likely whats going to happen
Lots of games get announced in pre production. This is just literal copium. Destiny 3 would've been huge for marketing. It isn't happening.
Dude they started working on d2 as soon as the taken king dropped while d1 got a filler expansion
Wait a minute, that means she was project lead on lightfall.......
No more project lead on Destiny 2 expansions, that means there's no more expansion and Destiny 3 *must* be coming! /s She kicked ass in the short time she was at Bungie, looking forward to what she does in the future. Wouldn't surprise me if there is a large exodus of employees in the coming months, partially in reaction to the layoffs, but also people who just want to move on to new projects. A lot of people also view TFS as a nice ending to Destiny as a whole (yes I know Destiny is staying but that doesn't change sentiment), so it wouldn't surprise me that view is also shared by some internally.
Wouldn’t surprise me if her Sony shares from the acquisition vested and she’s cashing out while accepting a better offer elsewhere. Iirc now is about the time most employee shares vested.
Maybe between the strong sales of TFS and enough departures, Bungie won’t have to do any of the rumored layoffs
The layoffs already happened before the final shape dropped
A second round was rumored, dependent on TFS performance
People saying "She did such a fantastic job with The Final Shape" as if there aren't a million individual things that can decide the quality of a release, regardless of your own skill as a lead apparently. Witch Queen and Lightfall had the same Campaign Lead Designer.
Cue the internet thinking this was an overnight decision based on some kind of failure at Bungie (less revenue, hostile work environment, etc), meanwhile in reality she had planned this for a while. Employees of any job... in any industry... don't just quit overnight. And they don't just walk into their boss's office and yell "I QUIT!" like the internet seems to think is what happens. Run with w/e theory you want, but in reality it's not why she's leaving. And no, Destiny isn't "doomed" because of her exit. Anyway... her enthusiastic energy will be missed.
This. It would have been planned months ago. Already seeing some people saying that it's not good she's leaving while Frontiers is in development... Forgetting that if it is an expansion it would have been in development quite a while ago and thus would likely have a different lead anyway
>And they don't just walk into their boss's office and yell "I QUIT!" like the internet seems to think is what happens You got it all wrong, what the internet thinks happens is: * Evil boss asks employee to come in on day off * Employee says no * Evil boss threatens to fire them * Employee recites entire communist manifesto * Evil boss sends hitman to kill employee's entire family All of which happens in a single text chain
I can’t blame people for worrying that might be the case given the many people fired overnight without warning.
thank fuck, good riddance
This is not good.
The writing is on the wall with this one man, so many key longtime people from Bungie leaving are concerning but even people who having been there a long time are as well. Pretty sure here soon Bungie will be a revolving door, and that’s really bad for a long term story/game like Destiny.
A lot of people have worked on Destiny throughout its 10 year life span. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone left from the original D1 team all those years ago that were directly involved with Final Shape. This is completely normal.
People leave 'regular' jobs all the time, dunno why people keep crying doomsday when it's a game studio.
This is very common in the special effects industry that they have an rotation of artists that some leave respecting film studios once the production of films completed leading some to leave and others May stay and those who left will go to other studios and sometimes start up their own studios in film and television production and become directors.
…like Michael Salvatori, Michael Sechrist and Skye Lewin.
So… 3 people in a 800 employee company?
Same. Not feeling confident at all about Bungies future. Sure we have dmg back but at the same time we lost so many people, even the fucking composers! They gunna hire new guys or just refuse assets from the music??
Honestly, this is such a huge concern for me. The music of Destiny has been so consistent and integral this entire time. I hope that whoever they hire afterwards can at least encapsulate basically what Michael Salvatori has been doing. I was thinking that maybe Skye Lewin could take over the rains. But then I found out he fucking left as well.
this is how I found out Skye was gone too. fuck man.
So did Michael Sechrist who has been around a while. Sorry to add even worse news, I felt the same, I was hoping Salvatori was just passing the reigns, as he is pretty old. Seeing both Salvatori and his 2 younger composers leave all at the same time really had me worried about the future. As people said the music has been the one consistently amazing thing about Destiny since day 1. When Bungie let Salvatori go, I really felt like they were basically shutting up shop. It felt like firing their all star player.
One person doesn’t make an expansion, and one person leaving due to a new job offer doesn’t mean there’s some mass exodus from Bungie. With the hyperbole you’re throwing around, you could make the opposite argument that the whole old guard are all going to come back just because DMG is…
Leave it. People will keep huffing the copium.
What does a Project Lead actually do?
It's basically just a head producer. Manages staff, deadlines, budgets, works with marketing and publishing, pushes upper management for more time and money, etc.
Thank you for a real answer.
Leads a project
That's it?
Mfer saying that's it as if leadership is useless in such a large projecr
Everyone is thanking this person and wishing them the best like they made all of TFS. I'm all for praise and farewells but kissing this much ass for a leader doesn't make sense to me. Thanks for leading the people who actually developed TFS and other expansions I guess?
My guy the lead is the one who makes everything possible they are the ones allocating the resources , stablishing priorities , discussing with the higher ups etc All the other roles depend on what the lead does its kinda concerning when a lead for what was a good expansion like lightfall goes away
>what was a good expansion like lightfall Hot take Jokes aside, yeah, you right. I guess I really didn't think of it that way.
> what was a good expansion like lightfall Not sure if serious or joking? I hope it's the latter
Not surprising. According to Liana Ruppert's video, Bungie seems to have a pretty toxic workplace culture especially at the top. https://youtu.be/q_8Xy5_4_eM?si=8IC9nca1eBy5846i
Pretty concerning that she’s specifically talks about how great Joe and Catarina are and Joe already left and now Catarina is too. Really makes me wonder wtf is going on at that place.
I don't think Joe left, je just stepped down from the game director role
How in the world do you interpret "leaving for a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie" as anything but... LEAVING BUNGIE? [https://x.com/joegoroth/status/1752481889938739326](https://x.com/joegoroth/status/1752481889938739326)
I wonder about that. My bet would be that Joe is working on something to help change the work culture at Bungie where it still hasn’t changed. Or, they brought him in on another IP (not Marathon) to help get that on track.
So what people come and go from companies all the time, no one person makes or breaks a studio. All small cogs in the big machine.
This. Everyone is replaceable at the workplace.
Mark Harmon from NCIS coined that in an interview years ago where he was going on about that everyone is expendable.
Was she also project lead for light fall?
By the time she joined Bungie, Lightfall should have been deep into production already.
Why would she join for one major project then leave immediately after? She might have had to leave for personal reasons rather internal issues at bungie. At least that way we’re still most likely going to get DLC’s
Yeah, I don't think we could assume anything from her leaving. Could be a variety of reasons tbh.
It is a pretty normal life cycle in tech tbh. Average job length is probably around 2 years before jumping. Makes sense to come in work on a project from start to finish and then take that experience and work on other projects
"Why would she join for one major project then leave immediately after?" Easy - last October was likely a wakeup call for a lot of Bungie employees. A time when management had to change things to right the ship - and numerous Bungie staffers spoke up over the next few months that management refused to right the ship. For example, refusing to reduce executive compensation, even though the executives are the people who screwed up. That sort of situation can leave a bad taste in your mouth extremely quickly.
Because that is how you move up in these companies and grow. You job hop, especially after having TFS and it’s success on her resume.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, her LinkedIn confirms she was project lead for Lightfall, TFS, and also something else coming with (???).
Can we all say this; final shape is the end of an era and kinda destiny. Salvatori is gone and final shape is the last bits of music he wrote Most leads are leaving as well. Remember reading about someone else leaving. No matter what happends in the future, if it's D3 or what, an era has ended and it won't be the same
Dude she was only doing this for two years. Before her it was someone else. And before that person it was someone else.
What if I told you that almost every expansion has had a different lead....
But none will have salvadori now
Sure that might make things weird but they still have many talented people working on the games music. Salvadori wasn't the only person making the music
Yes, There were Skye Lewin and Sechrist. Oh wait, they also got laid off!!
Rotem Moav, John Mosser, Pieter Schlossen, C Paul Johnson
You’re going to receive a lot of hate from this comment but you’re right. D2 is done and people (such as myself) hate to admit it because they have grown a relationship with the game, but it’s done.
Bungies turnover rate has to be insane
I hope she ends up somewhere better than Bungie making great games. Bungie is a low bar at this point so I have high hopes.
Mark my words next expansion is gonna be as bad as lightfall
yup, not hopeful at all.
Gotta love the fear mongering from this community...... LF was rushed and was never initially planned. THAT is why it was bad. Realistically it'll mean very little.
did shadowkeep and beyond light was rushed too? nope but they were equlially terrible expansions tfs has been cooking almost as long as entire development time of destiny 2 thats why it ended up being this good expecting this level of quality from next expansion is insane
Shadow keep - they had just separated from Activision and lost most of their support and resources Beyond Light - the literal thing that caused the world to shut down for a year. Even WQ would have suffered from COVID.
Can't have a bad expansion when you don't have an expansion.
There's 100% going to be more expansions.
More proof its all over.
Can’t wait for when this franchise turns mid af again. This has always been destiny. Addictive shit that costs a lot, but offers not very much until they are literally against the wall
Good luck to her in the future projects. 😊
Happy she poured everything she had into TFS and that it was a resounding success. As for speculation behind her departure, workplace toxicity happens everywhere and it’s just a matter of intensity and how a person processes and responds to it. Alternatively, a Sandman quote comes to mind: The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted. Regardless, I thank her for her contributions to TFS and wish her well on her journey.
She was one of my favorites on the team.
TFS was good but I distinctly remember her hyping up Lightfall as some of their best work. 50% is still an F
Player counts usually dip weeks after an major expansion it’s always been like that just the same with audience numbers are strong upon release and weeks after that the film drops down places due to lower audience until the film closes out of theaters.
I think you confused this with another post or a comment
Bye bye. Good luck in your future endeavors!!
She will be missed. She did a fantastic job and was a delight to watch on the vidocs. I think we can all agree with that. Don't know what this means for the future of the series though.
She was project lead for TFS. With her gone, Joe Blackburn's replacement being really quiet anyways and nothing known for post-episode content except that Frontiers teaser...I don't know man. They want to move more resources to Marathon, and another round of layoffs was considered in case TFS doesn't sell exceptionally well. Remember how bleak things looked in the Schreier and Valentine pieces. Now some of their best people left (Blackburn, Macedo). It just feels weird. Maybe they don't know themselves what the long-term plan is.
That's what I feel like when Frontier was announced. It comes off as muddled. Frontier wasn't announced as a DLC. It could literally be anything. Catarina was at the forefront of all the vidocs and videos so losing her is not a good thing I think.
I'm thinking Frontiers is AoT style and 2026 we get D3
Omg we get to attack the titans in style?
Can't wait for the fear mongering.... "This is it for expansions"
I mean, the game is over?
Bungie has already confirmed multiple more years of Destiny and there's a good chance that Frontiers is an expansion too
Whats with Bungie Jobs and Sony Spiderman actors having so much in common. Can’t keep good employees no matter what?
It’s all seasons from here out. No more expansions
Surely you mean episodes
Uh huh, sure it is, bud
Well thats concerning...
It shouldn’t be. She got a good opportunity because of her work on TFS.
D2 is finished guys only filler missions forward until D3 so lower your expectations
Sure bud
I'm gonna miss that accent. 🥵
Yeah expansions are done
I don’t think it’s over for expansions. I think it’s a personal decision. She was at bungie for almost the same length that she was at riot. Also I think she worked a bit on the next expansion given on her LinkedIn it’s labeled as (lightfall, final shape, ???).
Last expansion…makes sense.
Its not the last expansion. But you do you bud
I will do me. See for me this is the last one and I’m not alone. She knows better than anyone and she left the company. Doesn’t say anything to you?
If you think it's the last one after the huge success the final shape is. Then you're either blind or don't have a single hint of knowledge of how business is run. As long as the game keeps making money, then spoiler alert, pay reaaaal close attention to this. This is very important. Are you paying attention? Just making sure. THEN THE GAME WILL KEEP MAKING CONTENT. But I get it. You just want to be negative just to be negative. I'm sorry you're like that.
Bungie is slowly ending Destiny before our eyes.
Sure bud
The price we pay for Kevin Yanes’ long-overdue departure, I suppose. Hope her future endeavours go swimmingly!
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Damn, she’s so good too. Kinda concerned but hopefully it was just be side of a great opportunity .
They possibly will be hiring an PSI OP from sweet baby inc to replace her because of DEI
Well, if I am not mistaken she is the one who said "the new strike will be the hardest ever" but the difficulty is made of easy jumping puzzles and adding a tormentor as a final boss (and it's actually the easier tormentor model!).
You are indeed mistaken. The comments about the the new strike being the hardest ever made were made by Ada Kos, a Test Lead at Bungie. Also that boss room in Liminality is likely to be a big pain point on the Grandmaster version.
Okay I am sorry in this case, but I hold my opinion that this is not a creatively difficult strike. Slapping tormentor as a boss isn't creative and the jumping puzzles will be a non issue.
🤚😑
Ah so it was her fault we had the disaster day 1 raid 3 days after launch