The Murky Story between Bungie and Pete Parsons
The creators of Destiny have been in a burning house for almost a week now, constantly receiving coal from journalists and various content creators. Paul Tassi has already talked about how the Bungie layoffs were not Sony’s doing. At the same time, Aztecross shared about the Marathon testing by Escape from Tarkov streamers.
A few hours ago, Hailey Eira, who previously published Halo insides, shared previously unheard information about what happened between Pete Parsons and Bungie during the original Halo trilogy. In her lengthy tweet, Hailey revealed that she managed to learn the untold story of Bungie and Microsoft. She couldn’t share for undisclosed reasons for a long time, and today, she discussed some details.
In 2001, when Bungie joined Microsoft (MC), people like Harold Ryan and Pete Parsons (the current CEO of Bungie and former MC employee) were invited to the studio. They helped Bungie with Halo: Combat Evolved in terms of testing and marketing. A few years later, the studio wanted to leave MC and become independent, as the profit share from Halo was low.
During this time, the creators of Halo felt one thing: they were not on the same path as Microsoft. Moreover, strange things were happening there. As an example, Ed Fries, their main ally from MC who had convinced them to make the deal before, quit. The team managed to persuade Pete Parsons, who a year back became a manager at the studio, to start negotiations with MC.
The corporation wanted to continue developing the fresh franchise. They asked Bungie to stay, offering them a deal to receive 11% of the profits from the sales of Halo 2. The studio agreed. After the game’s release, they were told that the 11% profit applied only to the first few million units and it would decrease. By the end of the first day of Halo 2’s release, their profit had dropped to 2%. That was another turning point for the studio.
Pete Parsons once again served as a negotiator between the two companies. His goal was to achieve an agreement between them again. Otherwise, Bungie would leave the corporation’s fold. The negotiations lasted several months, and some key employees threatened to resign. Parsons told them he would depart with them if MC didn’t agree to the offer.
Sometime after, the key employees decided to hold a special meeting, but those who wanted to resign had to leave the room. After the discussion, they called in each of these three employees who had left the room. They came to a not-very-pleasant conclusion — Pete was playing both sides. They asked him to resign to attract Microsoft’s attention, and he did.
Following these events, Bungie underwent a significant restructuring. Harold Ryan, the same Microsoft employee, started overseeing the studio’s business. Meanwhile, Marty O’Donnell, the famous composer who left them amidst a scandal, began to manage the people’s side. The game creators invited Shane Kim to their company to continue the discussion of the deal with the corporation.
Eventually, they caught MC’s attention and completed a deal on 07.07.07. After this, 343 Industries was created for those who wanted to continue working under MC’s roof. At that time, it became known that Parsons had not resigned from Microsoft and had backstabbed Bungie.
It was not disclosed to us what exactly happened, but Hailey mentioned that another saga began after these events. During this time, Bungie started losing some of its key people, and in her opinion, Harold Ryan and Pete Parsons were the main reasons behind it. Martin O’Donnell hinted at this even before with his famous phrase “Be Nice to the Goose.”
Right now, various journalists are investigating these details, and we are yet to find out if they are true. Judging by the public reaction, the Bungie rabbit hole is being dug even deeper.
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