Destiny 2 players have been noticing a shift in how Bungie communicates with the players, which is that there’s simply far less communication than there was previously.
According to Destiny 2’s community manager, that’s not at all an accident, nor is it intended to be a punishment.
After a player lamented about the lack of communication on Destiny 2’s Reddit page, and another feigned disbelief that the community’s actions were the cause, DMG responded to reveal that this is due to the very real threats and serious harassment Bungie developers have received.
Here’s the thing, the harassment we’ve spoken to isn’t just rude replies on twitter or vague comments. There have been real threats towards our people and our studio. We’re taking them seriously, which is leading to an amount of reduced communications as the team plans future protections / strategies to help avoid these sorts of things.
I will be very clear in saying that I appreciate the studio in the amount that’s it’s helped me personally after some serious harassment towards me and my family. I’m taking time off in part because of this. Just because you can’t see it directly in a given tweet or forum reply doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
None of it is meant to be a punishment to the people who can leave clear and respectful feedback for our developers, mind you. There are no instances at Bungie where people actively look at a conversation and plan retaliatory actions towards our playerbase via hotfixes, updates, or comms strategies. Sometimes, we just need to take some time to get things straightened out. Can take weeks, can take months – just like any given development pipeline, as we want what’s best for our players AND our employees. That said, we can’t just move about “business as usual” until things are resolved. It sucks, but we want to be sure that folks are safe and taken care of.
I agree – it’s a bummer that we don’t have as much interaction here as of late. The team is planning ways in which to communicate with you all – some of these plans I’m really looking forward to when I get back in.
I can assure you that many on the team are checking out threads each day and talking about your feedback.Cheers.
DMG’s words did have an effect on the user who originally claimed they’d “never agree” that actions from a minority of community members would result in less communication from the developer, as they later responded to say they had changed their mind.
Source – [Forbes]