Lawyer Don McGowan won $7 million for Bungie in court cases over Destiny 2. However, he was fired after Sony bought Bungie. Now he has spoken out clearly about what Sony’s takeover will mean for Bungie and is receiving a lot of approval from fans.
What does the lawyer say? Don McGowan spoke on LinkedIn over the weekend about the extensive changes that Bungie is now making to Destiny 2. Bungie will change how often new updates come out and wants to adjust the loot:
Destiny 2: Echoes shows his new weapons in Act 3 in the trailer
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Lawyer criticizes bosses who make Destiny for “themselves and their friends”
This is how he sees Sony’s influence: McGowan says Sony’s focus is on making Destiny 2 run like a “business” and not following the bosses’ wishes, because the bosses’ wrong decisions have led to the many layoffs.
Sony’s focus is on bringing new players to Destiny 2.
Some Bungie employees with their big egos said when Sony bought the company that “nothing will change” – but Don McGowan asked at the time of the takeover: “Do you think Sony is paying $3.6 billion for the right to say nothing here?”
McGowan says the changes now announced are exactly what needs to be done to “keep a business running” – and no longer “make the game that you and your friends like.”
Who is his criticism directed against? McGowan doesn’t name any names, only talks about the “C-suite,” the bosses. From what we know, much of the criticism seems to be directed at Pete Parsons, the CEO of Bungie.
Bungie’s independence is viewed critically by fans
How is this discussed? The statement from Bungie’s former lawyer is causing quite a stir on Reddit.
There is a certain amount of schadenfreude in the fact that Bungie always strives to be independent, but apparently hasn’t been able to do anything with this independence and now Sony is taking more control again.
The most agreed comment says:
“I guess that puts all that ‘we’re escaping the tyranny of Microsoft’ talk to rest. It turns out it was a big mess and they need oversight.”
Bungie and the difficult marriage with Sony and Activision
This is what’s behind it: A big narrative surrounding Destiny has always been that Bungie is developing the online shooter Destiny independently, determining its own destiny, and no longer working under Microsoft like it did with Halo.
Between 2014 and 2018, Destiny was developed in collaboration with Activision Blizzard. However, the company parted ways with them in 2019, probably because Bungie did not want to develop Destiny 3, as stipulated in the contract, and sales figures had dropped to a disappointing level for Activision after the poor release of Destiny 2.
In 2019, Bungie gave the impression that without Activision on board, they could develop the game they always wanted to make. But this game fell far short of fans’ expectations.
With the purchase of Sony in 2022, everything was supposed to get better again because they promised more resources, but apparently they spent these resources so wastefully by starting new projects and hiring too many employees that the big awakening came with the wave of layoffs in 2024.
This is the lawyer: The lawyer Don McGowan, who is speaking here, has won several high-value cases for Destiny 2 and Bungie in court and has earned a lot of money. After Bungie was bought by Sony, he was fired anyway because Bungie now uses Sony’s legal department: Destiny 2: Lawyer wins $7.2 million in lawsuits against cheaters and agitators – Bungie fires him