Bungie vaulting Destiny 2 content backfires with the latest Red War lawsuit court ruling

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Lately, Destiny 2’s developer Bungie has been making headlines due to two reasons: first, their recent alpha playtest for the upcoming 2025 game Marathon; second, a more unusual cause of attention.

On Friday, a federal judge declined to dismiss a legal dispute over Destiny 2, originally initiated by Matthew Kelsey Martineau (also known as Caspar Cole), who claims Bungie copied significant ideas from his unpublished sci-fi narrative found on his WordPress blog during the development of Destiny 2’s Red War campaign and Curse of Osiris expansion. The lawsuit was brought forth in October of last year, with Bungie submitting a motion for dismissal shortly thereafter. Now, five months later, that motion has been turned down.

In summary, Judge Susie Morgan’s decision denies Bungie’s proposal because the developer no longer possesses playable versions of the Red War and Curse of Osiris releases from Destiny 2. These expansions were taken out as part of Bungie’s “Destiny Content Vault” program, where they periodically store and remove older content to accommodate the game’s growing size and technical complexity over its eight-year lifespan.

Instead of submitting official gameplay videos on YouTube and information from the community-managed Destiny Wiki (Destinypedia) as evidence, Bungie chose a different approach; however, such third-party resources were found to be inadequate for their particular case.

Although Bungie claims these YouTube videos and wiki pages accurately depict Destiny 2 gameplay and information, the judge determined they are not suitable for a detailed comparison in this case, and furthermore, since they originated from external sources, they cannot be used as valid evidence.

In Judge Morgan’s ruling, it was stated that the exhibits attached to the Defendant’s motion to dismiss will be disregarded because the necessary time for evidence gathering (discovery) hasn’t elapsed yet. Moreover, these attachments were produced by a third party and their authenticity has not been proven.

Despite speculations that Bungie may include Red War and Curse of Osiris in a private version of Destiny 2 for dispute resolution with Martineau, the developer clarified that it’s technically impossible because the old content is no longer compatible with the game as it currently stands. As stated in their reply, “there is now no viable way for [Bungie] to provide the Court with a reviewable version of the [Red War or Osiris] campaigns or to produce them should this matter proceed to discovery,” according to the latest ruling.

Because of these circumstances, including the intricacies surrounding this legal dispute where ideas from a game are being compared to those in a written work, Martineau’s case may proceed. The court determined that “the plaintiff has adequately claimed the necessary components for a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Bungie faces a unique problem in this Destiny 2 case

Last year, when I learned about this lawsuit involving Martineau and Destiny 2, I didn’t anticipate it would progress extensively. In my opinion, while there may be some validity to his allegations concerning the Red Legion faction in Destiny 2 – the new document presents a comprehensive analysis of multiple alleged similarities between the Red Legion group in his work and the Destiny enemy – most of the other aspects he mentions are rather unclear and open to debate.

One illustration of this is the similarity between the floating Traveler entity in Destiny, which grants powers to the player characters known as Guardians, and the Tononob Station orbiting Earth in Martineau’s narrative; both are “large cosmic entities suspended above Earth.” However, such celestial beings are not unusual in science fiction tales.

Initially, I believed this legal matter would swiftly resolve itself, but it appears as though it’s escalating significantly for Bungie, given its progression. Ironically, the primary cause for this intensification stems from Bungie’s own choice to eliminate older Destiny 2 content – a decision that, while debatable in terms of game health, has undeniably created a peculiar predicament within this lawsuit.

Despite my conviction that Bungie will eventually emerge victorious in this lawsuit, it’s intriguing to note that Martineau appears to have a reasonable chance of winning. The course of events has definitely taken an unexpected turn, and it’ll be fascinating to see how things unfold in the coming days.

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2025-05-05 22:39