Destiny 2: Bungie explains why they hardly talk to the fans anymore – unfortunately they have very good reasons
With Destiny 2, developer Bungie has drastically restricted communication with fans. Developers rarely speak on reddit and Twitter. Community manager Dylan “dmg04” Gafner now explains on reddit why people speak less: There have been death threats against the team, which are taken very seriously.
This is how it used to be:
While there has always been a lot of criticism of Destiny and Bungie, communication has been a strength of the team. The long-time community manager DeeJ was often criticized for having little concrete say and for rambling a lot, but the actual “makers” of the game kept turning to the players via Twitter or reddit and shared their thoughts on very specific, small-scale ones Aspects of the giant shooter featuring:
In addition, the company itself made regular long contributions, videos, blog posts and live streams in which the development could be looked at from the map. Mastermind Luke Smith gave lengthy interviews: sometimes he talked his head off (“throwing money at the monitor”), sometimes he gave interesting insights into how Destiny came about.
Luke Smith – How the savior of Destiny became a villain in Destiny 2
Bungie reduces communication to the bare essentials
How is it now? Lately there is hardly any interesting “side information” about Destiny. It’s reduced to the bare essentials. Communication is clearly limited.
what happened The relationship between the community and the Destiny team has always been one of tension. People liked to tease developers and the hobby of every Destiny player was to complain about Destiny: There is not enough new content, too much old stuff is recycled, the developers can’t do anything and have no idea. It’s been like this since release.
Destiny is now 8 years of history behind it – and 8 years of trouble with the fans:
But in the past few months, Destiny has had some serious incidents:
Community Manager explains why people don’t talk to fans much
Here’s what Bungie says now: Bungie Community Manager Dylan “dmg04” Garfner has actually been on an extended rehab vacation since June 28 and is seeking help from a doctor and a new therapist. He has started taking anti-depressants.
A user on reddit has now noticed that far fewer Bungie employees are commenting than before.
Dmg04 explains from vacation that this is deliberate:
The thing is, the harassment we talked about isn’t about harsh replies on Twitter or vague comments. There were real threats against our people and the studio. We take the threats seriously, this has led to less communication as we work as a team to put safety and security measures in place to prevent this from happening.
I want to say very clearly that I appreciate how much the studio has helped me personally after severe harassment has come against me and my family. That’s why I’m taking the time to figure it out. Just because you don’t see the serious harassment in a tweet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Dmg04 says that when the new communication channels are in place, there will be more talks with the fans again. Many developers would continue to read the comments and talk about the feedback internally.
But apparently the communication with the fans has been significantly reduced.
What kind of harassment are you talking about? In a lawsuit, Bungie reported direct threats against dmg04 and his family. A person wrote to him that he would move close to him, that he was “not safe anymore.”
Many players on reddit and also on MeinMMO have distanced themselves from these hateful messages to Bungie.
On MeinMMO it says something like this:
- “Ridiculous. As a developer, you want to be close to your players and you get to feel why others don’t.”
- “Anyone writing a death threat to a developer about something like this needs an update between their ears.”
One of the most interesting pieces of information that came to Destiny by the way is this little gem:
Destiny boss reveals: Originally, the glass chamber was not the first raid
Reference-mein-mmo.de