Meanwhile, Sony Remains Silent...

[00:00:00]I did, dude. I did see that. This [ __ ] is hilarious. Let me tell you Let me tell you who's profiting off of this situation.

[00:00:07]So, yesterday, Destiny 2 posted, "Thank you for walking with me all of these years." And this is beautiful beautiful tribute to the Destiny community going through all sorts of stuff. Very emotional. I was extremely moved. And one of the gentlemen that I know worked on this trailer, you [ __ ] you you you pulled the heartstrings really hard. But Xbox, BY THE WAY, SONY hasn't said anything. Sony's just like, "What?

[00:00:32]Destiny? What? That's a game?" Xbox, once a guardian, ALWAYS A GUARDIAN. HOT DAMN! SONY, YOU GOING TO LET XBOX COME IN YOUR HOUSE? I CAN'T believe I'm saying this. I wish Bungie was back with Xbox. I can't believe I can't believe I'm actually saying these words right now. Look, man, Sony has pretended to like not see any of this, but they definitely see it.

[00:00:56]And not only do they see it, but when you see campaigns go out, the marathon campaign that went out, and there's they're, you know, again, that was on the the game side, the agency side. But when you see stuff like that happening, they are hoping this issue goes away.

[00:01:11]But man, not making Destiny 3 is about to be the worst case of gonorrhea.

[00:01:16]It won't go away, brother.

[00:01:19]It just keeps coming back.

[00:01:21]Stronger. And it will it will wreak havoc. You understand. Anyways, this is hilarious to me.

[00:01:28]This shit's hilarious to me. And look, if you're Sony, you could have done anything. You could have retweeted this.

[00:01:33]You could have I don't even think Sony has said anything. I don't think they've said anything at all. PlayStation, what is you doing right now? Sony, what is you doing right now? You worried about iPhone cameras? Huh? I'm glad you bought Crunchyroll. I like anime, but you're killing my favorite game. It's personal now.

[00:01:53]Sony doesn't have to try anymore, and that's the thing. That right there. When you say statements like that, when you say they don't have to try anymore, I'm just letting you know this my this is a personal belief I carry with me. The moment I start feeling real big, the moment my head starts to swell a little too much, life is going to humble me.

[00:02:09]And humble me it has. The same with everyone else in this world. Life will find a way to humble you.

[00:02:16]>> So has Sony tried anything new since the PSP or Vita?

[00:02:18]>> Well, look, I mean, look, Xbox is not perfect right now by no means. Their CEO is pretty sharp, but they're literally looking at massive cuts and everyone's facing hardware issues right now, hardware pricing. However, you know, I'm just one guy. We're just one one community. I think a fairly large community, but one community. And uh I'm going to have to buy a console later this year to play GTA on since for whatever reason it's not coming to PC, at least not off the rip. And I'm just letting you know, green would look good in this office of mine. Or black, whatever. Black and green. Black and green. And look, look, I also just want to say like I don't put all of the blame at Sony, you know? And I've seen things.

[00:02:53]I've seen tweets. Leana put out some tweets too saying that um you know, Sony essentially saved Bungie from going under in 2022. I'mma be honest, I'm a bit skeptical. I'm just a bit skeptical.

[00:03:04]Not based on Leana's sources or or based on the information she had she was she was uh privy to, but um the reason why it was, you know, Bungie was going through massive expansion at that time, you know? And Beyond Light did really well. Shadowkeep had good numbers as well. And they also had NetEase in the room with them who had a seat at the board. So, there was a lot of money flowing in. And the whole, you know, the whole thing about the the building there, uh the office building that they built out cost hundreds of millions of dollars. I really want to push back on that, guys. I pulled the permits this morning. I went to Bellevue. I pulled the permits that were all pulled for that exact building from 2019 to 2023. Everything. Everything you can imagine, okay? Everything from the demo to the expansion, all of the permits.

[00:03:53]And what you can extrapolate from those permits is, well, you can extrapolate some level of costs. And look, man, obviously everyone has a range, [music] but you can go through it, break it down, $400 a square foot. Point is, highest mark is still not cheap. Highest mark, somewhere around $90 million is what they probably spent. Now, that's still a lot of [ __ ] money for that office building, okay? For that studio.

[00:04:16]But, it's definitely not hundreds of millions of dollars. And secondly, that type of expansion does not represent a company that's about to become insolvent. You see what I'm saying?

[00:04:26]Bungie was actively expanding. They were cooking up multiple IPs. And I think Destiny was making a ton of money.

[00:04:34]Bungie is doing mental gymnastics to avoid the reality that Destiny 2 cost way too much to make when the player count drops. So, I've heard that a lot.

[00:04:41]I would like for you to tell me what justifies as too much. Seriously. I would like for you to tell me what In what areas does Destiny cost too much to make in comparison to Warframe, in comparison to a Marathon? You've seen the budget for Marathon. You know, the whole the the the biggest reply I've seen so far online, every time someone brings up Destiny right now, is, "Well, if you wanted a Destiny 3, you should have paid for it. You should have bought more Destiny 2." And it's like, "You dumb [ __ ] We already paid for it. We paid for that [ __ ] The Destiny community paid for all of that [ __ ] They probably paid for Destiny 3 twice.

[00:05:16]It's not our fault that the money went elsewhere. It's not our fault the money went to to Marathon. It's not our fault the money went to other incubation projects, which by the way never came to fruition." Keep in mind, the agenda at Bungie 2020 internally was that they were going to have four games alongside Destiny by 2025. 2025, they had no other games. And the one game they got out was Marathon. That was in 2026. Now, what is this a What is this What is the lesson to be learned from all of this? The lesson, in my opinion, is It's simple.

[00:05:45]Build within your means. Capitalize on what you're really good at and continue to lean into that. That's That's what I get from this. The whole multi-IP studio thing, I get it, man. You're spreading out risk, right? That's the That's the theory. You're spreading out risk. But, in my opinion, it's also when when you when there's statements internally that Destiny is not going to be the winning horse forever, I get that sentiment.

[00:06:08]But, my my my question to that is, why not? Why not? Jagex went through the exact same thing. At one time, Jagex was supposed to become multi-IP. They brought some people in. They said, "We're going to turn RuneScape into a modern-day MMORPG. We're going to have multiple games cooked up and this is good for us. This is good for the Jagex brand. It's good for risk." And what did RuneScape figure out in this situation?

[00:06:29]What did Jagex figure out in this situation? They said, "Wow, we can either be mediocre to [ __ ] at four or five different other games, or we can be really [ __ ] good at one game. Really [ __ ] good at one game." I'll give you another example. Look no further than Digital Extremes. DE, who's had Warframe, who almost could have got bought out by Sony in 2020, but they didn't take the deal. Why? Because they didn't want to lose their independence.

[00:06:53]They keep continuing to cook Warframe year after year, while subsequently building Soulframe alongside it. [music] And one thing that DE has done such a good job of is every time they have their livestreams and they're showing off Warframe and Soulframe, they're constantly talking about the lessons they've learned in Warframe, which is translated to Soulframe and vice versa.

[00:07:12]They mention different aspects of Soulframe. Different developments that have occurred on the Soulframe side that they've implemented on the Warframe side, making Warframe a better game. And as the as the community, what you get from that is you're saying, "Wow, this is a sharpening effect between both of these games that is making both the games better." Marathon, when it was originally brought to us in the Destiny community, it felt more like a slap in the face. It said, "Hey, those high-tick rate servers you've wanted all those years, you're not going to get it.

[00:07:40]Marathon is Hey, those dedicated servers you mentioned so many times, you're not going to get it, Marathon's going to get it. Oh, yeah, by the way, the reason why you haven't gotten any PvP updates in Destiny, which greatly, by the way, contributes to player engagement, you're going to get a lot less PvP updates here on out. Matter of fact, we don't really even have a PvP team. They're working on Marathon. Do you see where I'm coming with this, guys? There's a way to do things, and there's a way not to do things, and you have two perfect examples of those side by side. This is not to take away from the developers on the Destiny side, or even the developers on the Marathon side, who are just doing their job. But there is a way to do things, and it start it starts from the very [ __ ] top, and how you keep your community as one cohesive unit, to make everyone feel like they are a team. And I can tell you right out the gate, it never felt that way. Anyways, we can we can hit until until I'm looking at financials, or you we're looking at And by the way, we don't have access to those financials. Bungie was private in anyways, so I don't know. What I do know is that they were greatly expanding. Let me Let me just pull up the list Let me pull up the list of expansions. And so, whenever I hear store When I hear things like Bungie was about to go out in 2022 or 2021, and so they had to sign the deal with the devil, that being Sony.

[00:08:53]>> [laughter] >> Sony's probably like, "Dude, what the [ __ ] am I? I just want a good investment, sure." But when I say deal with the devil, I what I really mean by that is you lose your independence. Not necessarily saying that the uh the deal itself is predatory, okay? When I say um you know, to me, that's that's the deal with the devil. It's losing your independence, right? So, a couple things I pulled up, too. I looked up to see if Bungie took any PPP loans for during COVID. As far as I could find, they did not. So, the reason why I have some issues with the whole narrative that Bungie was about to go broke is if you pull the permits, you can go to the city of Bellevue permits, and you can actually pull it based on the the street location of it. The demolition in 2019 was actually not them demoing, but everything from 2020 on was, in fact, Bungie. And that was for the um 208,000 square foot expansion, the two elevators they added, the new lobby they added, the 24,000 square foot floor addition.

[00:09:48]They did have some 500 550 ton cranes that set the rooftops, a mechanical work. And this does not include the IT work, of course. But anyways, roughly speaking on per square foot cost in 2020 was where I I I came between and it's a wide range. 60 to 90 million. That's a that's a pretty range. But it's much different than the hundreds of I'm being told that this building cost them hundreds of millions. And ain't no [ __ ] way. If that building cost them hundreds of millions, if that studio cost them hundreds of millions, they got [ __ ] And as someone who used to be in construction, I've seen some [ __ ] but that would have been one of the more egregious [ __ ] I think could have ever taken place. They got taken for a ride if that was the case. If it cost them hundreds of millions dollars. What I'm really trying to point out to is that there was massive expansion going on from Bungie. Lots of spending and not saying they couldn't have overspent. But the point is is that Destiny was obviously bringing in lots of money. And then on top of that, Sony comes in and gives them a price of 3.6 billion.

[00:10:45]Doesn't necessarily seem like a price point for a company they see in desperation. Now, here's what I would do if I was leadership. If I was the owner or CEO as Pete was, and I had to convince my studio of why we need to take the deal with the devil and lose our independence. Oh, we going to paint the narrative, baby. Oh, it's bad. You hear me? Every time I get in front of people be like, oh god, we might go out next week, boys. We're doing all we can.

[00:11:09]We need a savior. And they'd be like, well, what but but great leader of ours, where is where is this savior you speak of? We may have to take the deal with Sony. Now, why do they want the deal with Sony? Well, if you were an executive or someone that had a lot of shares in Bungie, you got paid well. The fact that Barrett has come out and said that he is owed 45 to 50 million dollars. And he's suing for 200 million.

[00:11:33]That's that's for whatever. But the fact that he said he is owed 50 million dollars for his payout, okay? And by the way, he wasn't even the most senior guy.

[00:11:42]That kind of creates a hierarchy here of what the payouts were. I can only imagine how much Pete walked away with.

[00:11:49]The point I'm trying to make here, guys, is that if you had a chance of walking away with tens of millions of dollars, you might spin that same narrative. You might say, "Hell yeah, we're in trouble, boys. We're in trouble. Any minute now, we might go out." And by the way, you really can't take everything anyone in a a position of leadership, when it comes to that kind of stuff, you really can't take the word, okay? I put it to you like this. Years ago, I used to do construction. How did you keep your guys from asking for raises?

[00:12:17]This is going to sound terrible. I'm just being real with you. You always said you were going broke. That's how, MAN. YOU WALKED OUT THERE, "Oh god, man, fellas, we're losing so much money on this job. Oh, damn it. It's rough out here. I don't know if we're going to make it." Do you understand? You see what I'm saying to you right now. But this is true, guys. This is true. This is this is just is exactly what most people in positions of leadership, the ones that actually control the money, what they do. This is what they do.

[00:12:44]There's always this like, you know, always we might be going broke any day now. You know what I mean? And at least alluding to maybe not coming out saying we're going broke, but you know, there's always this constant struggle. You know what I'm saying? "God, this job right here we just got. Oh my lord, we losing money. We losing money bad, man. I did I didn't price concrete right on this thing. We losing money bad. Damn it, we're taking too long. I need everybody working 120 hours a week. We working the way we ain't working enough. We're losing too much damn money." I'm I'm giving you a a rough example in the construction blue collar world, but these these these same examples, you'd be surprised, are multiple industries.

[00:13:23]So, what I'm really trying to get around to is I wouldn't trust what Bungie was telling employees around that 21 22 era, that 2020 2021 era, because the reality is they had to get the entire company on board with the idea of getting bought out by Sony. That's my opinion. All right, that's my Look, somebody can come out with the financials and I'll eat my words. I'll eat my [ __ ] words. That's my opinion.

[00:13:46]You tell your investors you're making loads of money and then you tell your workers you're losing money.

[00:13:50]There it is. That's the strat. That's the strat. It's shitty, but it unfortunately is the reality. I'm just letting y'all know. So, what does all this have to do with everything? Well, it means that at the end of the day we don't have a Destiny 3 and Sony is in complete control of the fate of that and there's nothing we can do other than raise hell. There's really nothing else I can do. Nothing else you could do. We can raise hell and that's about it. Now, I think raising hell has done a lot more than what people may lead you to believe. I think it's already created a lot of waves. You don't create waves like you guys have created. And if you say that hasn't done anything whenever you get stuff like this being thrown out there. Now, this has been corrected, but avoid talking about a Destiny 3, you have created waves. Waves have been created. Sony has seen it. They have seen it. They really want it to go away.

[00:14:36]Really want it to go away. And the thing is the Destiny community won't go away.

[00:14:40]They may not talk about it as much. We may not be hitting the threads as much a month from now, six months from now, whatever, but I can tell you right now there's going to be some ill feelings toward the Sony side. And I know everyone's jumping up and saying Sony's not at fault for this. They're the savior, right? They supposedly saved Bungie from going under. The reality is that Sony's the one that's not green lighting a D3 right now. That's the reality. And I could tell you a couple times they didn't green light it. So, the bad move in my opinion. The bad move. Slap that like button like your mama told you, right?

[00:15:18]>> [music] >> Mhm.