Bungie announced today via their official blog that they are taking steps to prevent any potential spread of Covid-19 AKA Coronavirus within their worldwide offices.
We’ll post the full statement below, but in essence the Destiny dev team will be switching to remote work for an undisclosed amount of time because of the concentration of outbreaks in the greater Seattle as compared to the rest of the U.S.
Bungie has prepared ways for employees to continue to communicate and it appears that they don’t anticipate a major disruption of work on Destiny 2 other than “a possibility that this change could affect our patching cadence in the short term.”
Season of the Worthy will still launch next Tuesday on March 10 as planned.
This announcement is the latest in a string of similar statements about preventative Coronavirus measures being taken by video game companies.
It appears to have started with Sony and Square Enix dropping out of PAX East 2020. Afterwards, more companies followed a similar suit with GDC leading to the event’s postponement.
Here’s the full statement from Bungie:
Since news of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak appeared a few months back, Bungie leadership has been keeping a close eye on updates to follow the progress of the global containment effort. With the recent spread of the virus into the U.S., and with a particular density of cases found in the greater Seattle area (near Bungie HQ), we have been actively working on plans over the last few weeks to ensure the health and safety of our employees and partners, both locally and globally.
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.
Today, we have activated this fully remote work infrastructure and policy for all Bungie employees across the globe, with the goals of prioritizing the safety of our employees and continuing to develop and deliver on a game we love for our community.
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.
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. Be well, take care of yourself, and see you online.
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