Bungie | Code Like It's 198x

For its first ten years Bungie made games for the Apple Macintosh, a computer most games publishers treated as an afterthought. It was a small Chicago company, and its games were good enough that Mac owners who had watched PC players enjoy Doom treated Marathon almost as a religion, and that in 1999 Steve Jobs used Bungie’s next game to show off Apple’s new machines. Within a year Microsoft had bought the studio, and that game, Halo, went on sale as the launch game of the Xbox. Bungie left Microsoft in 2007, built Destiny with Activision, and has been owned by Sony since 2022.

Fast facts

Founded: 1991, in Chicago, by Alex Seropian and Jason Jones.
Early games (Macintosh): Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete (1992), Pathways into Darkness (1993), Marathon (at the turn of 1995), Marathon 2: Durandal (1995).
Strategy games: Myth: The Fallen Lords (1997) and Myth II, for Mac and Windows.
Owned by Microsoft: June 2000 to October 2007. It made Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) and its sequels up to Halo: Reach (2010).
Independent: 2007 to 2022, with a publishing contract with Activision for Destiny (2014) that ended in January 2019.
Owned by Sony: since July 2022, bought for $3.6 billion.

Minotaur and Pathways

Bungie’s early games included Gnop!, but the one that got it noticed was designed by Jason Jones for players on a network. Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete, which Computer Gaming World reviewed in October 1992, needed “a connection to at least one other Macintosh via modem, cable, or AppleTalk”, and took two to seven players, each on their own Mac, for $89.99. The publisher was given as “Bungie Software Products Corporation, Chicago, IL”. A year later the magazine nominated it for its Action Game of the Year award “because of its exciting multi-player capacity”, calling it “a multi-player network Rogue for the Macintosh environment”.

Pathways into Darkness (1993) went first-person. The player is an American special forces soldier who has to carry a nuclear device into a pyramid in the Central American jungle, but the parachute drop goes wrong and the soldier lands alone, with a map, a flashlight and a broken rifle. Computer Gaming World summed it up as “So many monsters, so little time”. It played, the same magazine said later, “more like an adventure game”, with items to find and puzzles to solve.

Marathon

By 1994 Mac owners had watched PC players enjoy Doom for a year. Computer Gaming World’s Christopher Breen described Mac bulletin boards full of threads titled “Where is Mac-DOOM?” and “Why no DOOM for Mac?”. Bungie’s answer was Marathon. After months of delay, Breen wrote, the full game was released to coincide with the Macworld Expo in San Francisco in January 1995, where Bungie ran a “Kill-a-thon” on networked Macs on its stand.

The player is a security officer aboard the colony ship Marathon, which has been invaded by an alien race, the Pfhor, and whose computer has been taken over by a rogue artificial intelligence called Durandal. It was a Doom-style shooter with more to think about. The player had a motion detector, and on one level an oxygen supply to watch. Unlike in Doom, you could aim up and down, and players discovered “grenade hopping”, firing a grenade at the floor to be thrown up onto a ledge. There were 26 levels for one player and ten network scenarios, and every box included a second, network-only installation, so that two people could play on one copy. “If you have a Macintosh, you probably already own this game,” Breen wrote. “If you’re a PC user, eat your heart out.”

Edge said Marathon “did for Macs what Doom did for PCs”, and that “Mac owners world wide went crazy for the game, with Marathon add-ons sprouting all over the Internet”. The sequel, Marathon 2: Durandal, came out at the end of 1995; Edge reviewed it in March 1996 at £54.99 and called its predecessor “the best-selling Mac game ever”. It added water to swim through, co-operative play for up to eight people and new multiplayer games such as “kill the man with the ball”. Bungie liked the name Durandal enough to use it twice: it had been the name of a mythical sword in Minotaur before it was the name of Marathon’s AI.

In January 2000 Bungie released the source code of the Marathon 2 engine under the GNU General Public Licence. Fans built an open-source engine, Aleph One, from it, and in 2005 Bungie allowed the three Marathon games to be given away free. Retro Gamer reported in 2004 that the games “continue to be developed by the open-source movement to this day”.

Myth

Bungie’s next games were not shooters. Myth: The Fallen Lords was a real-time battle game played across a 3D landscape, and Bungie released it for Windows as well as the Mac. “The problem is that when you say ‘realtime strategy,’ people think of Command & Conquer,” Jason Jones, co-founder and lead programmer and designer, told Edge in March 1997. “Myth’s going to be different… The emphasis is on tactics and combat. This is a game where you fight, period.” There was no base to build. Every arrow followed a real arc through the air: “the archers have to solve a fourth degree polynomial,” Jones explained. Computer Gaming World’s review in February 1998 said Myth “strips the standard real-time strategy game to the bone”, leaving “brutal and bloody combat”. PC Player visited Bungie’s Chicago office late in 1998 to see the sequel, Myth II.

Halo and Microsoft

In July 1999 Steve Jobs showed Halo during his Macworld Expo keynote. “At that point, Bungie was sort of a boutique favourite company for the Mac gamers,” the studio’s music director Marty O’Donnell told Edge years later. “When Steve Jobs decided he would highlight Halo… it just sort of changed on a dime the public perception of Bungie.”

It also caught Microsoft’s attention. On 19 June 2000 Bungie agreed to be bought by Microsoft. Its executive vice-president, Peter Tamte, told Computer Gaming World that Bungie was not in financial trouble and that other companies had offered more money: “Why sell? For the opportunity to play a key role in the launch of the X-Box.” Take-Two Interactive, which had owned 19.9 per cent of Bungie, received cash, the Myth games, the unfinished action game Oni and the right to make two games with the Halo engine. Microsoft took Halo and the rest of the catalogue, including Marathon, and Bungie moved to Redmond, near Seattle. “Mac gamers crushed,” ran the magazine’s headline.

Halo: Combat Evolved went on sale with the Xbox in North America on 15 November 2001, and Edge gave it ten out of ten. The review singled out the rules that made it play differently from earlier shooters. The Master Chief could carry only two weapons at once, “a surprising concession to realism”. His shield “starts recharging moments after the player has stopped taking damage”, so finding cover mattered, while his health did not recover. The game saved automatically at checkpoints, and he could drive a jeep with marines aboard. Edge compared its multiplayer with Rare’s GoldenEye 007, the old standard for console shooters, and concluded that it had been surpassed. The Halo entry tells the game’s story in full.

Halo 2 followed in November 2004, and the writer and design director Joseph Staten later called its “bitter end” a key moment in the studio’s history: “We tasted the heights of success, but also the bitterness of overreach… With Halo 2 the weight of the world was on our shoulders, and we didn’t do as good a job as we could have.” Halo 3 came out in September 2007.

Independence and Destiny

In October 2007 Microsoft confirmed that Bungie would become an independent company again. Microsoft kept the rights to Halo, and Bungie kept a publishing agreement with it. Bungie made two more Halo games for Microsoft: Halo 3: ODST (2009) and Halo: Reach (2010), which Edge called “Bungie’s last hurrah with Halo”. Microsoft gave the series to its own new studio, 343 Industries.

In 2010 Bungie signed a ten-year publishing contract with Activision, keeping the rights to the new game it would make. By 2013 it had moved into a converted multiplex cinema in Bellevue, near Seattle, with 350 staff, no closed offices and desks on wheels, so that, in Pete Parsons’s words, the studio could “move the team at will”. That February it revealed Destiny, an online science-fiction shooter set some 700 years in Earth’s future, which it intended to be a long-running series like Halo. Destiny was released on 9 September 2014, and Destiny 2 in 2017. Both were sold as ongoing games, with paid expansions about twice a year. In January 2019 Bungie and Activision ended their partnership, and Bungie took back the publishing rights to Destiny. Keza MacDonald noted in Wireframe that Activision had spent “more than half a billion” dollars funding and marketing the game, and that, unlike Halo, Bungie kept this one.

Sony

On 31 January 2022 Sony announced that it would buy Bungie for $3.6 billion. Sony’s statement at the time said that “Bungie’s world-class expertise in multi-platform development and live game services” would help it expand PlayStation. The purchase was completed on 15 July 2022. Bungie became an independent subsidiary within Sony, free to keep making games for other companies’ consoles.

The years since have been hard. Bungie released a new game called Marathon, an online extraction shooter, on 5 March 2026 for Windows, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Sony later reduced the value it placed on Bungie by more than $700 million. Destiny 2’s last major content update, Monument of Triumph, came out on 9 June 2026, and on 25 June Sony announced layoffs affecting “most” of the Destiny team and “some” of the Marathon team. A notice filed with Washington State listed 292 jobs, and the studio head, Justin Truman, stepped down. In September 2026 Bungie’s new leadership said that Marathon “did not reach as many players as we had hoped”, promised to rework it, and said it would bring back parts of Destiny 2 that had been removed from the game.

Sources

William C. Fisher, “Well Met On The Net: A Designer Looks At Minotaur”, Computer Gaming World issue 99, October 1992: designer, publisher, players, price and connection requirements.
Computer Gaming World issue 111, October 1993, p. 72: Minotaur nominated for Action Game of the Year.
Computer Gaming World issue 112, November 1993, p. 122: Pathways into Darkness review.
Christopher Breen, Marathon review, Computer Gaming World issue 130, May 1995, pp. 112–114: the wait for a Mac Doom, the January Macworld release and “Kill-a-thon”, the story, the motion detector and oxygen, aiming and grenade hopping, the levels and network scenarios, the extra network install.
Edge issue 27, December 1995, p. 24: Marathon 2 preview (“did for Macs what Doom did for PCs”, up to eight players).
Edge issue 30, March 1996, pp. 74–75: Marathon 2: Durandal review (£54.99, “the best-selling Mac game ever”, water, co-operative play, “kill the man with the ball”).
Edge issue 43, March 1997: Myth preview (Jason Jones as co-founder, lead programmer and designer; Doug Zartman; the archers’ arcs).
Greg Fortune, Myth: The Fallen Lords review, Computer Gaming World issue 163, February 1998.
PC Player (Germany), December 1998: visit to Bungie in Chicago and Myth 2.
Retro Gamer issue 11, 2004, feature on Halo’s Mac origins: Bungie’s release of the Marathon source code and the open-source games.
Computer Gaming World issue 194, September 2000, pp. 32–33, “Microsoft Bags Bungie”: the agreement of 19 June 2000, Peter Tamte’s comments, Take-Two’s share and what it kept, the move to Redmond.
Hyper issue 90, April 2001, pp. 25–27: Halo preview (Durandal as Minotaur’s sword and Marathon’s AI).
Edge issue 105, Christmas 2001, pp. 66–68: Halo review (two weapons, the recharging shield, checkpoints, vehicles, GoldenEye).
Edge issue 182, December 2007, news: Bungie’s independence from Microsoft, which keeps Halo.
Edge issue 215, June 2010, p. 26: Halo: Reach preview (“Bungie’s last hurrah with Halo”).
Edge issue 250, February 2013, pp. 124–127: studio profile (founders, Gnop! in the softography, the Macworld keynote, Marty O’Donnell and Joseph Staten, the Activision contract, the Bellevue office, 350 staff, Destiny).
Matthias Sundström, “Recovering the Satellites”, Wireframe issue 4, December 2018: Destiny revealed in February 2013.
Keza MacDonald, “Bungie’s jump into the unknown”, Wireframe issue 6, January 2019, p. 3: the end of the Activision partnership, the publishing rights, Activision’s spending, expansions twice a year.
Wireframe issue 60, February 2022, news: Sony’s purchase and its statement.
Wikipedia, “Bungie” (web, secondary): founding in May 1991; the independence of October 2007; the Activision contract of April 2010; Destiny released 9 September 2014; Destiny 2 in 2017; the Sony announcement of 31 January 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie
Wikipedia, “Aleph One (game engine)” (web, secondary): the Marathon 2 source released under the GPL in January 2000, citing MacTech, 18 January 2000; free distribution of the three games authorised in 2005, citing PC Gamer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_One_(game_engine)
Engadget, “Sony completes $3.6 billion deal to buy Bungie”, 15 July 2022 (web, secondary): completion, independent subsidiary, multiplatform. https://www.engadget.com/sony-closes-bungie-acquisition-playstation-studios-190623763.html
Bungie, “Marathon Releases March 5, 2026” (web, secondary), and Igor Bonifacic, “Bungie’s Marathon arrives on March 5”, Engadget, 19 January 2026 (web, secondary): release date and platforms. https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/marathon-releases-march-5-2026-new-trailer-and-more and https://www.engadget.com/gaming/bungies-marathon-arrives-on-march-5-193808588.html
Lawrence Bonk, “Sony announces major layoffs at Bungie, including most of the Destiny team”, Engadget, 25 June 2026 (web, secondary): the layoffs, the reduced valuation, Justin Truman. https://www.engadget.com/2201755/sony-announces-major-layoffs-at-bungie-including-most-of-the-destiny-team/
“Bungie layoffs revealed to have affected nearly 300 jobs at Destiny 2 maker”, Video Games Chronicle (web, secondary): the WARN notice for 292 jobs, Monument of Triumph on 9 June. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/bungie-layoffs-revealed-to-have-affected-nearly-300-jobs-at-destiny-2-maker/
Chris Scullion, “‘We intend to earn back your trust’”, Video Games Chronicle, 21 September 2026 (web, secondary): plans for Marathon and Destiny 2. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/we-intend-to-earn-back-your-trust-bungie-announces-plans-to-bring-back-destiny-2-and-improve-marathon/