Payback, a Destiny spinoff that was not, in fact, Destiny 3, was cancelled two months before the latest mass layoffs at Bungie

Two months before this week's mass layoff of more than 200 staff at Bungie, «Payback,» the codename for a third-person perspective spinoff project set in the Destiny universe, was cancelled in order to prioritize development of the upcoming Marathon extraction shooter, according to a report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

According to the blog post from Bungie CEO Pete Parsons that announced the layoffs—which was apparently how some staff got the news—the studio's second major downsizing in less than a year is the result of an «overly ambitious» management decision to initiate «several incubation projects,» which left Bungie's development staff spread «too thin, too quickly.» One of those projects was Payback, a Destiny spinoff that Schreier's sources said would «shake up the formula in major ways.»

Described as «a significant departure» that would borrow elements from Warframe and Genshin Impact, Payback traded Destiny's first-person perspective for third-person combat and exploration, and would «allow players to use the franchise's characters to explore a large world.» Two months ago, Bungie cancelled Payback to concentrate development resources on Marathon, relocating most of the Payback team to assist with the extraction shooter reboot's 2025 release.

Schreier notes that rumors circulated online in recent months, leading fans to believe that Payback was being developed as a full sequel to Destiny 2, were inaccurate «according to the people familiar.» Payback, he writes, was considered internally as a spinoff project. Schreier also reports that Bungie hadn't initiated development on a Destiny 3 project, with the studio instead looking to maintain ongoing support for Destiny 2, particularly given the financial pressures it has faced ever since the critical failure of last year's Lightfall expansion, which Parson's himself described as a «quality miss» in his post.

On the topic of annual expansions, Bungie is reportedly abandoning its major annual Destiny 2 drops,