This week, Bungie announced mass layoffs across the studio. Around 220 roles were eliminated, representing 17% of the studio's workforce.
One of the projects impacted by the layoffs has been Payback, believed to have been a spin-off of Bungie's hit sci-fi shooter franchise, Destiny. While Bungie will continue to focus on and support Destiny 2, Payback was reportedly canceled a while ago, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.
It's noted that Payback was a Destiny spin-off and not Destiny 3. Bungie had reportedly only done "very early work" on Payback when the decision was made to stop. Destiny 3 has never been canceled, according to Schreier, because it was never in development anyway.
The report aligns with a recent statement from Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb who, while on Game Mess Mornings, referred to Payback as "the next Destiny" — not Destiny 3.
"Either way, let's be clear, a 'Destiny 3' or 'next Destiny' is just not the thing that they are going to be coming out of this looking toward let alone working on in any real way," he explained.
Destiny is considered to be an incredibly success franchise and Bungie CEO Pete Parsons even acknowledged that the recent expansion, The Final Shape, had been a success. But "rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall" ultimately led to Bungie having to make cuts.
Bungie still remains committed to supporting Destiny 2, but it's believed that future content updates will be significantly smaller compared to the large expansions that the game has been receiving. Marathon, the new sci-fi extraction shooter, is expected to be released in 2025.
Released in June 2024, The Final Shape was a major expansion for Destiny 2. Its arrival marked the end of the "Light and Darkness Saga" which had begun 10 years ago.
There was speculation that following the expansion's release, Bungie would begin to focus on the next Destiny game — not another expansion but a full-fledged game. We don't quite know what kind of spin-off Payback was shaping up to be, but it sounds like the project was canceled well before these layoffs.
Prior to The Final Shape's release, Bungie Creative Director Luke Smith had a cryptic tweet that mentioned the word "Hope" multiple times. The tweet has since been removed, so we aren't quite sure what he was ever referring to with it.