Lately, Bungie’s been all over the news, mostly ’cause of their Marathon game stuff. It’s like everyone’s got an opinion, right? But here’s the twist: they’re in the spotlight for something else entirely.
So, on Friday, some federal judge shut down Bungie’s attempt to toss out a lawsuit about Destiny 2. Some writer, Matthew Kelsey Martineau—who goes by Caspar Cole, which is honestly a pretty cool name—claims Bungie ripped off his unpublished sci-fi story. Apparently, it was sitting on his WordPress blog when Bungie was making Destiny 2’s Red War and Curse of Osiris. Bungie wanted this lawsuit out of the way fast, but, plot twist, the judge was like, nope.
And here’s where it gets funky. Bungie scrubbed those old game builds from Destiny 2 ages ago. They’ve got this thing called the “Destiny Content Vault” where they ditch old stuff to keep the game from, I dunno, exploding? So they submitted these YouTube videos and wiki pages as proof instead. But the judge basically said, “Yeah, no, that ain’t gonna cut it.”
Now, you’d think Bungie could just whip up a private build of those campaigns to show the court, right? Nope. Turns out that old content can’t mesh with the current game setup. It’s like trying to play a cassette in a digital player—not happening.
What’s wild is, because of all this, Martineau’s got enough wiggle room to keep his case alive. It’s kinda like David vs. Goliath, and this court thinks David’s got a real shot this time.
And if you’re wondering, why all this drama got past Bungie’s legal radar—it’s ’cause they threw those campaigns into the vault. A choice to declutter the game’s basically backfired. Whether locking that stuff away was smart or not… well, that’s a debate for another day.
I kinda thought this lawsuit would be a non-issue, like, who takes fan claims seriously, right? But here we are. Martineau’s hanging in there, and the irony is—Bungie’s big cleaning spree might’ve just handed him a win. How’s that for a plot twist?