Destiny 2‘s massive sunsetting scandal keeps coming back to haunt Bungie over and over again, as it rightfully should. The game lost about 50% of its content overnight with the release ofBeyond Light, though some yet hoped that the Red War campaign would come back, at least. Alas, no.
Let’s circle back for a bit, though. The information that Bungie itself no longer hasanyworking build ofDestiny 2with Red War campaign has been brought to light as part of an ongoing lawsuit. Specifically, the lawsuit where authorMatthew Kelsey Martineau claimed that Bungie stoleideas from his body of work to bringDestiny 2‘s original campaign to fruition. Obviously, Bungie is defending itself from Martineau’s claims of plagiarization, which I do feel were flimsy at the absolute best, but I’m not particularly keen on how this is being accomplished.
The Red War is gone for good, so stop asking about it already
As reported byThe Game Post, Bungie’s ownfilingvia Head of Engineering David Aldridge states that “The ‘Red War’ legacy build [ofDestiny 2] can no longer run because its outdated code is incompatible withDestiny 2’s evolved underlying operational framework, which has evolved considerably since the ‘Red War’ campaign was retired. As a result, Bungie cannot feasibly provide the Court with the originalDestiny 2game as it existed in 2017, including the accused ‘Red War’ campaign, in any operable or reviewable form. Nor will Bungie be able to produce the original, accused campaign in operable or reviewable form should this matter proceed to formal discovery.”
In other words, Bungie does not have any feasible way to actually show off the Red War even as part of ongoing litigation. Instead, the studio has had to rely on “third-party originating materials” (i.e. video footage of cutscenes and gameplay from the Red War) to fulfill this purpose.
Bungiedoespresumably have the actual Red War assets lying about somewhere as part of the infamous Destiny Content Vault, but there’s simply no way to actually play the campaign at this time, as it doesn’t seem that Bungie’s keeping a backed-up version of the 2017 build ofDestiny 2anywhere.
For the time being, this works in Bungie’s favor. Martineau is trying to get the court to assess his allegedly plagiarized unpublished short stories in direct comparison toDestiny 2‘s Red War narrative, but there’s no way to actually do this. Up until now, I genuinely expected Bungie to have backed up all the old, legacy content in this so-called Content Vault, but that’s clearly not the case, as the developer is testifying under oath that it’s just not there.
We’ll have to wait and see whether the lawsuit ends up going anywhere in the end, but I don’t really expect it to pan out the way Martineau wants it to. In the grander scheme of things, for me this whole development just underlinesthe transient nature ofDestinyat large. No matterhow good it is in the moment, the content you enjoy the most is always at risk of being taken out if it’s a part of a seasonal release. The Red War is obviously not coming back, ever. At best, we might get a snapshot or two of it at some point down the line, but the rest is gone for good.
