How Bungie Becomes 3rd Party Again

The press release is out now. Bungie is once again privately held. Bungie also made an post.

What does this mean and how did it get here? This discussion and burn out of constantly working on Halo for many years no doubt is weighting heavily on the studio.

They had two choices. Mass exit to form a new company, or talk to Microsoft to work out a deal. The deal break downs like this, Halo is own by MS. Oni and Myth is own by Take 2. Bungie owns Marathon. For Microsoft to go along with this deal, no doubt MS has first right of refusal on every project from here on out. Which means, basically Bungie is really more like a 2nd party company, that will only take projects to Sony/Nintendo/PC if Microsoft says no.

Meanwhile, what Microsoft does accept as a project, Bungie will make a LOT more money. And hey, Microsoft can move Bungie from first party support column to 3rd party support column.