It was always Bungie's IP as made crystal clear by the contract, which also made clear that it would remain so even if the relationship changed

Uhhh, no.... It was not made clear... Point of fact it was made clear what would happen to Bungie if they didn't meet their contracted revenue milestones. Which they weren't. Activision letting them out of their contract was Bungie dodging a bullet by jumping into a river full of hungry crocodiles and hoping for the best.

Yes it was, crystal clear: "Activision, as previously confirmed, retains the exclusive right to publish all Destiny titles. However, Bungie retains ownership of the Destiny intellectual property regardless of its relationship with Activision" That is from the actual contract. It is plain and simple

Uh huh... Moving on to conversations that are worth my time.

[quote]I've been saying it for years. Activision may be terrible people... Objectively.... A cancer on the gaming industry, and for note, I do not use that term jokingly, I use it in the manner it is intended, a corrupting disease that causes significant harm to the body of gaming fans as a whole. But no matter how much I dislike them, Bungie has always been squarely responsible for Destiny. All Activision did was set contractual revenue goals, Bungie was the one responsible for the decisions that would effect how those revenue goals were reached. So every decision that you've ever disliked about the direction of destiny?......... All of that was bungie. Activision gave Bungie the boot because it became clear they were no longer capable of regaining the core player base. People argue with me but I have a firm suspicion that an Activision rep showed up at Bungie headquarters flanked with Activision legal, walked past the Pete Parson's secretary ignoring their protests, shoved the door open, made a statement, laid a check that had already been written out on Parson's desk, shoved a pen into his hand, then snatched the signed check of his desk before the ink was even dry and left without saying another word. At which time Activision's commitment to Destiny ended. Bungie might have "celebrated" having full control over their ip... Because... You can't really be seen publicly running around screaming like the world is coming to an end. But there isn't a chance in hell they legitimately wanted to be saddled with this. People don't really seem to get what a publisher does. And a developer is not going to be happy to have their publisher tell them to go -blam!- them selves. Warframe has managed to self publish all this time because they have always survived on word of mouth advertising and a fanatically invested player base that keeps coming back over and over. And also, as much money as they make, they have never claimed to be a AAA developer, people take Warframe for what it is, they don't have high expectations. Destiny? Destiny does not fit into that mold. They're now self publishing, and they don't have any idea how to do that. It is however an interesting question as to rather or not Bungie now has control over the original destiny ip as well because now it means they could arguably combine the two games content into one game if they so desired which would double the amount of endgame content and strikes available for play...[/quote] Self publishing means: release the raid at launch of the season and hope twitch and YouTube cover the rest for free.

Basically..... Good lord I hope they have more to do in season of impotence than just a raid. I mean no way that would keep people interested for............... Oh..... Oh gods................. They...................... They said the first encounter will have a power level of like 715................................ You realize what this means?............ They're stretching the raid out across the whole -blam!-ing season. You'll have to do it a week at a time...Each week will have a new encounter open up with a higher power level... That's how they're stretching out the content.... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-