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Bungie Explains Why There's No "Feasible" Way To Play Destiny 2’s Vaulted Red War Campaign Even Internally In New Court Filings

Bungie says Destiny 2’s vaulted Red War campaign can’t be accessed even internally, making a return unlikely.

thegamepost.com

Bungie says Destiny 2’s vaulted Red War campaign can’t be accessed even internally, making a return unlikely.

Bungie has made it clear in new court filings that the original Destiny 2 “Red War” campaign isn’t just gone for players, it apparently no longer exists in a playable form within the studio itself. The company says the game’s original story mode, which was removed in 2020, is now completely inaccessible.

This came to light as part of an ongoing copyright lawsuit filed against Bungie by writer Matthew Kelsey Martineau, who claims that Bungie copied elements of his unpublished works to create the Red War storyline.

According to Aldridge, while Bungie did archive the original game code, the rapid evolution of Destiny 2’s underlying technology means that the Red War campaign is completely incompatible with the “game’s current operational framework.” Even if Bungie wanted to bring it back, it would probably have to be rebuilt from scratch rather than simply reactivated.

Read Aldridge’s full Declaration document here.

This statement also applies to all other vaulted content before Beyond Light, meaning fan-favorite activities like the Leviathan raid and old strikes likely suffer the same fate. Bungie has consistently said that bringing back vaulted content would be difficult.

For longtime Destiny 2 fans, this is probably disappointing news. Over the years, players have repeatedly asked Bungie to unvault older content, including the Red War campaign, which introduced Destiny 2’s story and many of its key characters.

 

[DryvBy]

I don't even understand how modern games have such limitations, especially when you're loading in/out a campaign. If GTA and RDR can manage to have content after content packed on, wtf is their problem?

 

[nowhat]

Bungie to court: our versioning system sucks! No rollbacks, no merges!

The reality: their versioning system may very well suck, not all have yet to see the light that is git. But where there is a will, there's a way. It's easier to can some features and later bring them back as a freebie.

 

[lockdown2222]

Stall tactic.

 

[diffusionx]

I don't even understand how modern games have such limitations, especially when you're loading in/out a campaign. If GTA and RDR can manage to have content after content packed on, wtf is their problem?

It's because Bungie sucks.

 

[Brigandier]

I read that has Bungle explains not Bungie then began to read the article in Bungles voice, Was more entertainment than I ever had with Destiny 2 tbh.

 

[Loomy]

I don't even understand how modern games have such limitations, especially when you're loading in/out a campaign. If GTA and RDR can manage to have content after content packed on, wtf is their problem?

Bungie to court: our versioning system sucks! No rollbacks, no merges!

The reality: their versioning system may very well suck, not all have yet to see the light that is git. But where there is a will, there's a way. It's easier to can some features and later bring them back as a freebie.

Rollbacks and merges come with conflicts that need to be resolved. For something the size of Destiny, that would likely mean every team in the company working on fixing merge conflicts.

It's no secret that D2 has changed a lot and, while Bungie may be overstating the difficulty involved in bringing back vaulted content, it's not exactly unreasonable to assume that not everything may be compatible with the game as it exists today.

My guess is the Red War campaign was so unpopular(and stupid, really) that they have no incentive to do it.

 

[adamsapple]

Bungie has made it clear in new court filings that the original Destiny 2 “Red War” campaign isn’t just gone for players, it apparently no longer exists in a playable form within the studio itself.

How?

This is somehow even worse than old Japanese companies not retaining source code. Destiny 2 is a relatively modern game by comparison and should have all of its original code and assets still available, no?

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

 

[sono]

The dog ate the evidence m'lord

 

[jordygrant1]

They would have to implement all the new features, i believe is what the article is saying. Basically, they COULD DO IT, but it would take some work.

 

[jcorb]

This is kind of wild, although I suppose it does make some sense.

I honestly have to think, a HUGE win for Bungie (I would think) is to actually merge ALL of D1 and D2’s content, and sell it as a “Destiny: The Light & Darkness Saga” collection. Just use Destiny 2 as the framework, section all of the content into “Chapters” you can uninstall (maybe an option to install your current chapter and the next one, once you complete one, it prompts you to delete the previous and install the following, so your flow is never interrupted).

Easier said than done, of course, but I could totally see people being willing to pay for EVERYTHING Destiny has to offer, content wise. And actually tell a cohesive goddamn story, instead of relying on youtubers to explain all the vaulted missions to you.

 

[Felessan]

I don't even understand how modern games have such limitations, especially when you're loading in/out a campaign. If GTA and RDR can manage to have content after content packed on, wtf is their problem?

Live content tested against new version and adjusted if found faulty. And archived things are not checked against compatibility and non-compatible parts just keep piling up over time.
Like Java 6 code doesn't really run good on current version as a lot of things were changed or removed since than.
As Bungie said - it's easier to build from the scratch than trying to upport old code sometimes, especially for very old code.

Rollbacks and merges come with conflicts that need to be resolved. For something the size of Destiny, that would likely mean every team in the company working on fixing merge conflicts.
It's no secret that D2 has changed a lot and, while Bungie may be overstating the difficulty involved in bringing back vaulted content, it's not exactly unreasonable to assume that not everything may be compatible with the game as it exists today.
My guess is the Red War campaign was so unpopular(and stupid, really) that they have no incentive to do it.

Porting features from old version to new version might be challenging, especially if versions far apart.
It's a reason companies can sit on a decade old version of software just because it cost fortune to migrate this company customizations to most recent version.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

 

[SkylineRKR]

The Red war sucked ass. But its a weird situation as it IS Destiny 2 proper. It was all you got when you bought Destiny 2 at launch. And thats gone. So while the game is still called Destiny 2, they completely changed the product.

 

[skneogaf]

I stopped playing destiny 2 because they kept changing things that restricted my ability to play what I paid for.

Destiny 1 complete edition is the best, if I want a destiny fix I'd play that.

 

[od-chan]

This is slightly besides the point, but man, I'd love getting into Destiny. There is nothing like it, as far as I'm aware. But I will sure as shit not purchase a dozen DLCs to get access to all the content. In MMOs for example you usually only have to buy the base game, the latest expansion and the other stuff usually comes bundled (or is bundled with the base game), so it's 3 purchases at most. Usually base+old expansions are priced reasonably too, but not with this game.

Then the game is also set up in this very convoluted way. There's more menus than in Monster Hunter for fuck's sake, and I'm not talking about equipment, I'm just talking about the "main screen" where you chose what content you'd want to play.

I pray to Winnie Pooh that the chinese will finally come up with a Destiny F2P clone, they'll probably even improve it by throwing waifus in it.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

But I will sure as shit not purchase a dozen DLCs to get access to all the content.

There was a humble bundle up a few days ago with literally everything for 30.

 

[od-chan]

There was a humble bundle up a few days ago with literally everything for 30.

Thanks for pointing it out, I appreciate you trying to be helpful, but fuck that bullshit. I'm not going to hold out and check bundles and whatnot to wait until Sony/Bungie are finally generous enough to give me the opportunity to buy their game for a reasonable price, instead of asking for ridiculous Sims type of money.

 

[kevboard]

this right there is the reason I will never buy a game from them ever again btw.

I actually wanted to replay the campaign a few years back with a friend, and then found out it was removed... Bungie is dead to me at this point, and honestly what they did should be illegal, and is one of the reason I hope the Stop Killing Games movement stops developers from doing this shit.

 

[SimTourist]

Everyone knows at this point that the Blam engine is shit to work with, 343 had the same issues with it on Infinite, adding anything new would break the game slowing down development.

 

[adamsapple]

Everyone knows at this point that the Blam engine is shit to work with, 343 had the same issues with it on Infinite, adding anything new would break the game slowing down development.

Enter Unreal Engine 5, the savior of game development.

 

[Kerotan]

They should sell a seperate single player only bundle to let people play the old campaigns. Wouldn't need to be compatible with anything then. But considering they might have copied his works they probably don't want to.

 

[Roman Empire]

Bungie's inability to produce content never fails to deliver.

They have a terrible content cadence, a lost writing team, horrible leadership, a 20+ gaming engine that went through many revisions but it's barely holding on from falling apart entirely, and no vision at all for their IPs. The only people who are incredible at their job are the art design, gameplay design, and music team.

No wonder why Sony wants to take control over Bungie as they keep digging deeper to their own grave.

 

[Doctor Hades]

Played Destiny and its sequel a bit at launch but just never really got on with them as they felt like a huge downgrade from the storytelling in their Halo games, which I played solely for their campaigns (including a bit of split-screen co-op in the first two games) and never bothered with the multiplayer at all.

Co-op and online multiplayer gaming really isn't my thing and over the years I've just become more and more wary of the so-called "live service" games to the point where I avoid playing any such games. They are an instant turn-off for me. They require me to invest far too much of my valuable time into them when I'd rather play other shorter games that have definite beginnings, middles and ends!

Live service games are needlessly grindy to the point of tedium for me because they prioritise team play over solo gaming, but also there is no game preservation with these either because once the game is switched off then they would be no way to ever revisit the game in the future (look what happened to Ubisoft's The Crew, a game I bought and only played solo; that is now relegated to being little more than YouTube videos now).

And reading that the original campaign is no longer in Destiny 2 because Bungie never bothered to update it with the engine just reinforces my opinion that live service games are absolutely not for me and possibly are not a good thing for the future of gaming overall. Oh and the news that Sony bought Bungie doesn't exactly excite me either as someone who enjoyed the PS4 and enjoys the PS5 for their strong single-player game focus.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Trash studio that must shut down for the good of humankind.

 

[Ogbert]

I love Destiny 2 and it sits alongside World of Warcraft as my most valued game.

But they just need to let it go. The game is so over engineered and convoluted at this point. It doesn’t even feel like a game anymore; rather a fragmented series of shooting galleries.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

So they just deleted it because of copyright claims?

Wouldn't be surprised.
There already was an issue with the story after they fired the writer of thr story for D1.

 

[HJuggernaut]

Bungie is shady, they'll do anything to save a buck, even kill off nathan fillion.

 

[The_Observer]

This is ridiculous. The incompetence existing in modern companies is incomprehensible.

 

[Three]

So they just deleted it because of copyright claims?

Wouldn't be surprised.
There already was an issue with the story after they fired the writer of thr story for D1.

No, they're saying they have it but it would not run on their game’s current operational framework:

while Bungie did archive the original game code, the rapid evolution of Destiny 2’s underlying technology means that the Red War campaign is completely incompatible with the “game’s current operational framework.

 

[The_Observer]

This is kind of wild, although I suppose it does make some sense.

I honestly have to think, a HUGE win for Bungie (I would think) is to actually merge ALL of D1 and D2’s content, and sell it as a “Destiny: The Light & Darkness Saga” collection. Just use Destiny 2 as the framework, section all of the content into “Chapters” you can uninstall (maybe an option to install your current chapter and the next one, once you complete one, it prompts you to delete the previous and install the following, so your flow is never interrupted).

Easier said than done, of course, but I could totally see people being willing to pay for EVERYTHING Destiny has to offer, content wise. And actually tell a cohesive goddamn story, instead of relying on youtubers to explain all the vaulted missions to you.

I would buy this, because original D1 is one of my fondest gaming memories (just realized from 10 years ago, damn). But what they did to D2 is an abomination with the vaulted content etc. But if they brought back everything I would gladly play it.

 

[OGM_Madness]

I’ll never understand why they wanted to hold on to Destiny 2 so bad instead of making a fork and calling it Destiny 3.

After all, a name is just branding/marketing, but they could have left Destiny 2 be in a complete state and start Destiny 3 with all the big changes they wanted to implement. Because in the end, the changes soured D2 for many players, but also, they couldn’t make as many changes as they wanted because it was still D2.

 

[violence]

It would be hilarious if we found out the ex bungee employees that went on to make Concord were the ones that made the versioning system.

 

[Gojiira]

Well the Red War campaign did use completely different Powers/Gear/Levelling systems so yeah the actual core systems were totally different even if superficially similar.
I dont see much point in completely rebalancing/remaking a shit campaign though.

 

[poodaddy]

I don't even understand how modern games have such limitations.

They don't, just good ole fashioned lying here.

 

[Punished Miku]

This is pretty ridiculous. So they won't patch their shit to give people what they paid for.

 

[ReyBrujo]

The reality: their versioning system may very well suck, not all have yet to see the light that is git.

Regardless of the content versioning system they are using they most likely can rollback but the scenario information would most likely be incompatible with the new engine. They would need to rollback the engine as well, which would mean new scenarios wouldn't be able to be played.

Working of the healthcare industry we are forced to support not only old stuff but also bad formatted stuff because otherwise you might put a life in danger for not accepting a bad formatted CDA/CCDA document so we have to spend a good amount of resources testing old documents. Personally it's unfathomable but hey, it's gaming, it's not as serious I guess.

 

[Hudo]

Destiny as a whole is such a colossally mismanaged shitfest, it's like they forgot how to make games after Halo Reach.

 

[Shtof]

I don't even understand how modern games have such limitations, especially when you're loading in/out a campaign. If GTA and RDR can manage to have content after content packed on, wtf is their problem?

Think of like trying to communicating with a peasant from England during the 13th century. You speak English and he spoke English too, but its not the same.

 

[MagnesD3]

I hope they are forced to refund. I despise them for this, the fact that there are a ton of players that dont call them out on this is crazy and toxic for the industry. Company should go down at this point if its ran like this.

 

[diffusionx]

This is kind of wild, although I suppose it does make some sense.

I honestly have to think, a HUGE win for Bungie (I would think) is to actually merge ALL of D1 and D2’s content, and sell it as a “Destiny: The Light & Darkness Saga” collection. Just use Destiny 2 as the framework, section all of the content into “Chapters” you can uninstall (maybe an option to install your current chapter and the next one, once you complete one, it prompts you to delete the previous and install the following, so your flow is never interrupted).

Easier said than done, of course, but I could totally see people being willing to pay for EVERYTHING Destiny has to offer, content wise. And actually tell a cohesive goddamn story, instead of relying on youtubers to explain all the vaulted missions to you.

This would likely be hugely popular, but Bungie is not competent enough to do this.

If you read about the history of this company and the development of their games, starting with Halo 2, they run into tech issues literally every single game. The tech is always a roadblock to something they want to do or claim to want to do. I don't think 20 years of this is just cynicism or laziness, they dont invest the resources they need to into the tech and it always causes them problems.

Like the tech people at the team would have had to make a conscious decision to support past content with their engine updates and development, and they decided they dont want to do that. It doesn't happen out of nowhere, it was a decision they made to cut it loose. And now they say, "well we decided not to support the old stuff, so the old stuff is not supported." NO SHIT!

 

[HRK69]

Lol, here I was, buying the expansions gradually so I could play everything when it’s all done…

Only to find out they disable them.

What the hell, Bungie?

 

[Dorago]

Bungie Explains Why There's No "Feasible" Way To Play Destiny 2’s Vaulted Red War Campaign Even Internally In New Court Filings

Bungie says Destiny 2’s vaulted Red War campaign can’t be accessed even internally, making a return unlikely.

thegamepost.com

I bought this POS when it first came out at the urging of friends.

I payed $60 then $20 for the first expansion and I can't play any of that now.

It was just a few years ago.

I have the first games that I ever bought on Steam namely the Valve All Games set and I installed HL1 last month.

Why bother paying for this shit when it's just gone in a few years?

 

[Sushi_Combo]

Always perplexed at their reasoning for releasing D2 in the first place. One of their goals was to reduce any of these types of limitations, yet they've had to cave in and remove swaths of content in order for the game to be in an operable state.

Players had to accept the fact that their time in D1 was essentially not respected, first red flag for me. Honestly it's really hard to even think of jumping into any current/new bungie game, as good as the gameplay is, I feel like they're the worst offenders at shafting their dedicated fanbase.

 

[struggler_guts]

Funny cause this is exactly what made me quit destiny. Why the fuck would I keep playing a game that's constantly deleting its own content in lieu of paid dlc that will also someday probably be deleted

 

[nowhat]

Working of the healthcare industry we are forced to support not only old stuff but also bad formatted stuff because otherwise you might put a life in danger for not accepting a bad formatted CDA/CCDA document so we have to spend a good amount of resources testing old documents. Personally it's unfathomable but hey, it's gaming, it's not as serious I guess.

Hey brother, I'm there as well. The company I'm currently working for has a ton of stuff invested in... Lotus Domino. I mean, it's no longer called Lotus, another company bought it. And the actual "Notes" users are basically non-existent, pretty much every one uses it via the web. But deep down, it's all Lotus (as a side note, arguably the OG of NOSQL databases).

So whenever I have to go "under the hood", so to speak, it's a traumatizing experience. And requires some arcane knowledge. On the other hand, more often than not Domino is just a REST interface with some quirks. Quirks you have to learn, but at the same time, are not that different from other quirks one could encounter. You just need to know the quirks. On the upside, I work remotely almost exclusively, can go for a few weeks without accomplishing basically anything, then do a few hours in and have people virtually clapping my back. I'm not downsizing as such, more like funsizing my life.

 

[Ovek]

Tweak I can see completely rebuild is complete bullshit.

 

[Kronark]

God the people at Bungie must be so fucking lazy. They reuse existing maps and assets constantly. The entire red war campaign probably exists in the game as reused assets sold in later seasons / dlcs.

I get that there might be some scripting updates, they might have to work on porting triggered events, maybe reimport the maps / assets to a newer container format, etc so it's not a 10 minute process but to act like it's impossible? Get the fuck out of here with that. This should be a few months of work for a very small team at most and if it isn't it's because they ripped the content out so half assedly that they never had any intention to cycle it back in and basically fucking lied to everyone.

Studio can't go bankrupt soon enough and take Marathon with it, just spare another generation of gamers the pain of expecting Bungie to ever do better.

 

[DeepEnigma]

God the people at Bungie must be so fucking lazy.

They had a trans knitting club or some shit on work time at the studio. Sony had to trim that fat in which they all threw temper tantrums like children.