Washington was one of the first places in the US hit by the coronavirus outbreak, and as it continues to spread and expand, Bungie is enacting a work from home protocol for its staff. The Bellevue-based studio began putting together a remote work infrastructure a few weeks ago when the coronavirus (COVID-19) threat became imminent. The developer plans to continue updates and development on Destiny 2 during this timeframe, specifically noting that it will not delay next week’s launch of Season of the Worthy and Trials of Osiris.
While health and safety are our top priority, we also recognize the importance of maintaining the continuity of our regular Bungie business operations and have rapidly built a remote work infrastructure to best support this. This includes delivering on our current content plans, the maintenance and upkeep of Destiny 2, as well as continuing development of the game.
To accompany this policy we have rolled out technical solutions for all employees to be able to maintain communication with one another, as well as to continue working on development and maintaining game-critical functions while working remotely. Our goal is to continue crafting the ever-evolving Destiny universe, while making those behind-the-scenes efforts to keep everything running smoothly invisible to our fans. While there is a possibility that this change could affect our patching cadence in the short term, we will be sure to keep players informed about those schedules as much as possible. Most immediately, we will still be launching Season of the Worthy on March 10, followed by the start of Trials of Osiris on March 13.
The studio does note that it could impact the “patching cadence in the short term,” but remains confident that it can maintain the scheduled launch and upkeep of next week’s brand new season. While some extraneous quality-of-life updates may take a hit during this time, continued development on new content and maintenance of game-critical functions will persist during the remote work period.
This is a new challenge for the studio of more than 900 employees, who have primarily worked out of an office location in Bellevue, Washington. The infrastructure for the remote work setup has been designed not only to allow employees to work remotely, but to continuing scaling and evolving with changes in the outbreak. It will also enable smooth reintegration back into the offices once the threat subsides.
Bungie’s approach to the COVID-19 outbreak is designed to react to rapid changes as news dictates, including how we will eventually re-integrate employees back into our local offices once the threat of the virus has lowered. While this is a big change for Bungie, we look at the challenge as an opportunity to stretch our ability to create and deliver the same kind of quality gaming experiences we always have in a new way.
While Bungie’s goal with this infrastructure is to make the impacts to the player as invisible as possible, it’s also publicly acknowledging the new protocol in order to set expectations in the months to come.
Destiny 2 Season of the Worthy launches on March 10, with the first weekend of Destiny 2 Trials of Osiris to take place on March 13. Bungie’s also looked even further into the future and given us some hints about what we can expect in Destiny 2 Year 4, set to launch this fall.
[Source: Bungie]
