The moment that Destiny 2 developer Bungie announced that the game's live service development was ending with the release of its final content update, there was immediate backlash from the looter shooter's community against the studio's new game Marathon.

Many Destiny fans angrily blamed Marathon for Destiny 2's end, claiming that the latter was abandoned by Bungie developers in favor of the new extraction shooter. This led to some nasty arguments between players of both games I was very frustrated to see, and ultimately detracted from the community coming together to celebrate Destiny's legacy (and push for a potential Destiny 3) somewhat.

However, former Bungie community manager Liana Ruppert took to social media to address player assumptions and speculations, asserting that "A lot of money didn't go into Destiny" because of leadership "greed," and not because of Marathon.

"We’re [former developers] saying it went into leadership pockets," she explained. "You should be pissed, but keep the blame where it was. Marathon has way less impact than yall think."

Now, Ruppert has spoken on the relationship between Marathon, Destiny, and Bungie's business once again — this time stating that "the only way to keep Bungie alive right now" in the wake of Destiny 2's end "is to support Marathon."

"Half the community is going to hate me for saying this, but the only way to keep Bungie alive right now is to support Marathon," she wrote in a social media post.

"People keep comparing Marathon numbers to Destiny and frankly, that's ignorant. Marathon was never designed to do [Destiny] numbers," Ruppert continued. "The conversations about that were very upfront early. It's more aligned with Tarkov than Destiny. Completely different target markets that just so happen to have a wide intersection with Destiny target markets since it uniquely has so many."

Essentially, what she's saying here is that Sony — which acquired Bungie for PlayStation in 2022 — doesn't have Destiny-sized expectations for Marathon, and so even if the game doesn't grow to become as big as Destiny is, the publisher may consider it successful and continue to invest in Bungie projects as long as Marathon performs decently well.

"Their value isn't SOLELY in Marathon but if Marathon is considered a failed project — which it [is] not at this time — then that puts them up for grabs for turning the Bungie name from a production studio [into] a service of expertise that would benefit the whole Sony network," Ruppert added in a follow-up comment.

I'm not sure if we'll ever get a Destiny 3 or not, but if you want to see Bungie make it at some point, I agree with Ruppert that you should want Marathon to perform well, even if it's not really your type of game. Thus far, it hasn't been a colossal hit or anything, but it has a passionate community of players across Xbox, PC, and PS5 even so.

I tried it and had some good fun, and while I probably won't come back to it much, I do hope it — and Bungie as a studio — has good days ahead.

Would you like to see Sony and Bungie eventually move forward with a Destiny 3? I'm curious, so leave a comment and vote in our poll to let me know.

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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. He's been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you'll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he's not writing or gaming, there's a good chance he's either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once. Follow him on X (Twitter).