Destiny 3 may yet happen, but Destiny's unannounced "Payback" spin-off won't, according to reports

Bungie have reportedly cancelled Payback, an unannounced project in the Destiny universe from former Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith and project lead Mark Noseworthy. Both Noseworthy and Smith appear to have lost their jobs in the course of Bungie's brutal cost-cutting this week, but Payback's cancellation pre-dates the layoffs. Envisaged as a Destiny spin-off, rather than Destiny 3, it was apparently dropped "a while ago".

All that's according to Gamespot's Tamoor Hussain, Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier (the source of the "a while ago" quote), as reported by Eurogamer. Payback's existence came to light in April, though Bungie have yet to formally comment on the subject. According to one self-alleged leaker, the name is a reference to "Bungie getting payback against themselves by creating something they hope everyone will love". I don't quite follow this explanation, but the leaker in question did correctly predict the introduction of Destiny 2's Prismatic character subclass, so they're more trustworthy than the average redditor with a bridge to sell.

Payback's cancellation seems to have paved the way for Smith and Noseworthy's departures. Gamespot sources claim that executive restructuring during this week's layoffs means the pair have "no path forward at Bungie".

The shockwaves from Bungie's headcount reduction continue to spread. As Nic wrote earlier today, insiders allege that the cuts have been in the works for a while, regardless of the success or not of Destiny 2's excellent recent expansion The Final Shape. Many of The Final Shape's senior team are now gone, including senior narrative designer Robert Brookes and narrative lead Kwan Perng - a miserable reward for yanking Destiny 2 out of the nose-dive instigated by the disastrous Lightfall expansion.

Aside from laying off staff, Bungie have also transferred 155 roles to parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment. Some of those roles will form a new PlayStation studio working on an untitled "action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe". Those remaining at Bungie will double down on development of the Marathon reboot and future Destiny projects.

This week's layoffs were announced by Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, who confessed that Bungie leadership have been "over-ambitious" in their handling of the business. Parsons has been lying low on social media after it was discovered that he'd spent $2,414,550 on cars since September 2022, including a Porsche costing over $200,000 in the wake of a previous round of layoffs last October.

$2,414,550 is a tiny dent in the outgoings of a video game developer that even now has around 850 people on the books, but still - I wonder how many narrative designers you can hire for $2,414,550? Payback is certainly the word: laid-off Bungie developers and Destiny players continue to call on Parsons to do the decent thing and resign his position.