On December 10th, Bungie announced that they will be putting an end to their partnership with Activision and will take over the publishing rights for Destiny. It has been 10 years since Bungie split from Microsoft and partnered with Activision in 2010.

According to the official announcement made on Bungie’s website, the transition process for Bungie’s acquiring the publishing rights to Destiny is already ongoing and past the early stages. Bungie plans to publish the franchise on their own after the transition process is finished. However, the Battle.Net service for the PC version of Destiny 2 won’t be ended right away due to the transition. They also said that both Bungie and Activision will be ‘committed to making the handoff as seamless as possible’.

According to the joint statement from Bungie and Activision, “Bungie will own and develop the franchise, and Activision will increase its focus on owned IPs and other projects. Activision and Bungie are committed to a seamless transition for the Destiny franchise and will continue to work together closely during the transition on behalf of the community of Destiny players around the world.”

Meanwhile, Bungie has joined in a partnership with Chinese NetEase in June 2018 and received a $100 million investment. Pete Parsons, the CEO of Bungie, had expressed the desire to develop new projects other than Destiny by saying, ‘the beginning of the self-publishing will be the beginning of the foundation of the new Bungie’.

Bungie, established in 1991, mostly focused on developing Macintosh games; Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000 where they launched the Halo series, selling millions of copies on the Xbox. After they split from Microsoft, Bungie has been servicing their new franchise, Destiny with Activision since 2010. Destiny 2 was the first non-Blizzard game to join Battle.Net.