Destiny 2’s Game Director Announces His Departure From Bungie

Destiny 2 game director Joe Blackburn has announced that he will be leaving Bungie next month, as The Final Shape reaches its final stages of development. Blackburn will be succeeded by Tyson Green, a Bungie veteran of over twenty years.

Blackburn dropped the news in a thread on Twitter discussing the development process on The Final Shape, the upcoming expansion that is set to provide a conclusion to Destiny 2’s story so far. Blackburn explained that The Final Shape is close to a milestone called the End-to-End playtest, an intensive period of internal playtesting that also marks the shift towards final polishing and bug fixes.

The upcoming playtest will also mark the end of Blackburn’s time with the company, with the current Destiny 2 game director saying he will be passing the reigns to Tyson Green once they hit the End-to-End.

“As a deeply invested Guardian before starting here at Bungie, getting to be a part of the Destiny 2 team has been the privilege of a lifetime,” Blackburn said of his time with the company. “I am and will forever remain a lifelong Bungie fan and believer in what the teams within its walls are capable of.”

Blackburn hasn’t yet said what is next in his career after Bungie, but says he is planning on taking a big break from social media, and continuing to enjoy Destiny as a player. The developer first joined Bungie in 2015, working on Destiny and its sequel as a raid designer. Blackburn left Bungie briefly for a position at Riot Games in 2019, but returned to Destiny 2 in 2020 to take up the mantle of game director.

Blackburn’s successor Tyson Green has been at Bungie since coming on to work on Myth 2, working on various Halo titles before ending up on Destiny. “If you’ve followed Bungie for any length of time, you’ve heard his name,” Blackburn said in a tweet. “From Halo PvP to the creation of Exotic weapons in D1, Tyson has been a critical part of Bungie’s legacy since Myth II.”

The Final Shape launches on February 27, providing a conclusion to Destiny 2’s Light and Darkness saga, after which Bungie will shake up how it progresses the game’s narrative, moving from its classic seasonal structure to episodes, which will release three times a year.