Bungie, Inc. is an American video game company based in Bellevue, Washington, and a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company was established in May 1991 by Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones's game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. Originally based in Chicago, Illinois, the company concentrated on Macintosh games during its early years and created two successful video game franchises called Marathon and Myth. An offshoot studio, Bungie West, produced Oni, published in 2001 and owned by Take-Two Interactive, which held a 19.9% ownership stake at the time.[2][3]
Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, and its project Halo: Combat Evolved was repurposed as a launch title for Microsoft's Xbox console. Halo became the Xbox's "killer app", selling millions of copies and spawning the Halo franchise. On October 5, 2007, Bungie announced that it had split from Microsoft and become a privately held independent company, Bungie LLC, while Microsoft retained ownership of the Halo franchise intellectual property. It signed a ten-year publishing deal with Activision in April 2010.[4][5] Its first project under this deal was the 2014 first-person shooter, Destiny,[6] which was followed by Destiny 2 in 2017. In January 2019, Bungie announced it was ending the partnership, and would take over publishing for Destiny.[7][8]
Sony Interactive Entertainment completed its acquisition of Bungie in July 2022, with Bungie remaining a multi-platform studio and publisher.[9][10][11]
Among Bungie's side projects is Bungie.net, the company's website, which includes company information, forums, and statistics-tracking and integration with many of its games. Bungie.net serves as the platform from which Bungie sells company-related merchandise out of the Bungie Store and runs other projects, including Bungie Aerospace, a charitable organization called The Bungie Foundation, a podcast, and online publications about game topics.
History
Background and founding (1990–1993)
In the early 1990s, Alex Seropian was pursuing a mathematics degree at the University of Chicago, as the university did not offer undergraduate degrees in computer science.[12] Living at home shortly before graduation, his father's wishes for him to get a job convinced Seropian to start his own game company instead.[12]
Seropian's first video game was a Pong clone, written and released nearly 20 years after the original, called Gnop! (Pong spelled backwards). The game was created in 1990, almost a year before Bungie's official incorporation,[13] but was released under the Bungie name and is considered by Bungie as its first game.[14]
Bungie.net
Bungie.net serves as the main portal for interaction between company staff and the community surrounding Bungie's games. When Bungie was bought by Microsoft, the site was seen as in competition with Microsoft's own Xbox.com site, but community management eventually won out as the bigger concern. The site has been redesigned several times.[92]
During Bungie's involvement with the Halo franchise, the site recorded statistics for each game played.[93] This information included statistics on each player in the game,[93] and a map of the game level showing where kills occurred, called "heatmaps".[94] On January 31, 2012, Bungie announced that, as of March 31, 2012, Bungie.net would no longer update Halo game statistics and Halo player service records, host new user-generated Halo content, or operate Halo's "Bungie Pro" service. Bungie's cessation of these services on March 31 completed the transition process of all data for Halo games being managed by 343 Industries.[95]
Culture
Martin O'Donnell described Bungie's workplace culture as "a slightly irreverent attitude, and not corporate, bureaucratic or business-focused";[97] artist Shi Kai Wang noted that when he walked into Bungie for an interview, "I realized that I was the one who was over-dressed, [and] I knew this was the place I wanted to work".[98] Bungie's content manager and podcast host, Frank O'Connor, comically noted that at a GameStop conference, the Bungie team was told to wear business casual, to which O'Connor replied "We [Bungie] don't do business casual".[93]
This informal, creative culture was one of the reasons Microsoft was interested in acquiring Bungie,[99] although game designer Jordan Weisman said that Microsoft came close to destroying the company's development culture, as it had with the now-defunct FASA Studio.[100]
Games developed
In addition to games, Bungie has developed its own game engine, originally named the Blam Engine for the Halo games, and then heavily modified and renamed as the Tiger Engine for Destiny.[114]
Legal issues
AimJunkies lawsuit
Bungie had initiated legal action against AimJunkies, a group owned by Phoenix Digital that sold software that allowed for cheating in Destiny 2, in 2021, asserting copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and trafficking in DMCA-violating software;[115] Bungie's initial claims were dismissed but an amended lawsuit allowed the case to proceed. AimJunkies attempted to countersue on claims that Bungie has hacked into the computer of the user that had developed these cheats, but those were dismissed in 2022.[116][117] At trial, judge Thomas Samuel Zilly ruled that Bungie lacked sufficient evidence to allow the DMCA and trafficking claims to move forward but instead sent these complaints to arbitration, where Bungie was awarded $4.3 million in damages.[118] The copyright claims proceeded to a jury trial, which found for Bungie in May 2024.
Related companies
Many of Bungie's employees have left the company to form their own studios. Double Aught was a short-lived company composed of several former Bungie team members, founded by Greg Kirkpatrick. Seropian left to form Wideload Games, developer of Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, and later co-founded Industrial Toys. Other companies include Giant Bite, founded by Hamilton Chu (producer on Halo and Oni) and Michael Evans (project lead on Oni),[128] and Certain Affinity, founded by Max Hoberman (the multiplayer design lead for Halo 2 and Halo 3). Certain Affinity's team included former Bungie employees David Bowman and Chad Armstrong (who later returned to Bungie). The studio collaborated with Bungie in releasing the last two downloadable maps for Halo 2[129] and the downloadable Defiant Map Pack for Halo: Reach.[130] 343 Industries, a game studio formed by Microsoft to manage the Halo series following the launch of Halo: Reach, also includes a few former Bungie employees, including Frank O'Connor.[131]
External links
References
- Todd Bishop. Report: 'Halo' maker Bungie moving to former movie theater American City Business Journals, March 19, 2009, retrieved July 31, 2010^
- IGN Staff. Microsoft Buys Bungie, Take Two Buys Oni, PS2 Situation Unchanged June 19, 2000, retrieved January 15, 2018^
- Peter Cohen. Bungie CEO talks Microsoft deal