Destiny 2 is enjoying a much-deserved moment of glory thanks to the recently released 30th Anniversary Pack, a DLC meant to celebrate Bungie's past and present work for the 30 years since its foundation. To further reinforce the positivity around this launch, with many developers at Bungie being proud and happy that their work was finally coming out, the studio also launched the Game2Give initiative to promote charity donations. However, a mere three days into the 30th Anniversary Pack, IGN published a report of what transpired from interviewing 26 past and present employees at Bungie about their experiences.
The report is mostly anonymous, and it shows the cracks in Bungie's ways to deal with its employees in the period that goes from Halo up to recent Destiny 2 years, mostly around its release and first year of content. Many writers have been simply put aside from the so-called "old guard," a fallacious leadership, and their work was often changed or given to others without notice, with the team not having clear boundaries on who was in charge of telling Destiny 2's story. It became apparent that some people within Bungie were too attached to Destiny's storytelling to let it go into someone else's hands for the sequel.
This is important because it's the same experience that Myelin Games had, as mentioned in their recent video response to the IGN article. At the same time that Bungie employees were struggling for their mental and physical health, as well as to be able to do their job, Myelin Games was contracted by the studio to curate the Grimoire Anthology volumes from 1 to 3. A week prior to the final deadline, they received an email with a series of changes that were meant to go live quickly, changes that were enforced by someone that wasn't on the narrative team for Destiny 2.
After working out everything, the final PDF document was ready for print, and that's when Myelin Games noticed that their official role was listed as "Lore Consultant," when instead their work had been so much more than that. They reached out to Bungie to state this, and the old guard abruptly cut them off, explaining that that specific attitude was selfish and against the work as a team. The person on the phone noticed that something wasn't right, and finally started to treat Mylin Games better and actually work towards a solution.
However, the content creator's contract expired, and they were never contacted by Bungie again, despite the fact that a fourth Grimoire Anthology was being made, to which Myeling Games' inner feeling was that they did wrong in speaking up. The situation at Bungie seems better now, and CEO Pete Parsons apologized for the pain caused by the studio's toxic culture.