Bungie Shakeup 2026: Marathon Director Exits, D2 Boom

Marathon game director Joe Ziegler quit Bungie on July 17, just four months after launch, handing the job to Del Chafe III, the former assistant director, who now runs the show with creative director Julia Nardin. The timing is not subtle. It lands weeks after Bungie's layoffs gutted the Destiny and Marathon teams and days before Marathon's own mid-season update. Meanwhile Destiny 2 climbed from 32nd to 5th place in Steam's US monthly active users the same month Bungie confirmed the game's active development was over. Nothing says "healthy studio" like your flagship dying game outperforming your live one.

Joe Ziegler Leaves Bungie, Nobody Is Shocked

Joe Ziegler leaves Bungie after joining in December 2022 from Riot Games, where he directed Valorant, and taking over Marathon following the removal of original director Christopher Barrett. He gave no reason for leaving beyond wanting to try something new somewhere else, which is corporate for "ask my lawyer." His message thanked the team and fans and read like a goodbye speech from someone who was not pushed, though the timing invites its own conclusions. Chafe has been with Bungie for fifteen years and served as assistant game director on Marathon since April 2024, so this is a promotion from within rather than a fresh face brought in to save anything.

Bungie laid off roughly 300 employees last month, including studio head Justin Truman, and Ziegler's exit is the second high-profile departure in weeks after twenty-year veteran Lars Bakken retired from the industry entirely. Draw your own conclusions about morale.

The Marathon game director shuffle also drops right before the game's Vault Breaker PvE mode releases on July 21, meaning Chafe inherits a roadmap he did not write and a community still deciding whether to trust the game at all. Marathon's peak Steam concurrent count sits at 88,337. Destiny 2 hit 167,867 during a farewell update for a game Bungie is walking away from. Read into that whatever you like.

Who's Actually Running Marathon Now

Destiny 2's Steam Player Count Says Something Bungie Doesn't Want to Hear

The Destiny 2 Steam player count hit its highest figure in two years after Monument of Triumph launched June 9, peaking at 167,867 concurrent players and topping Steam's global bestseller chart above Counter-Strike 2. This happened with zero marketing push, no sale, and no battle pass gimmick. People simply came back to say goodbye. Circana's tracker shows the game jumping from 32nd to 5th in US monthly active users on Steam for June, and a companion Sony petition asking for the franchise's future has crossed 400,000 signatures. None of it changes anything. PlayStation already laid off most of the Destiny team, and this is being treated as a farewell party, not a reprieve.

It marks the formal Destiny 2 end of live service, though the servers stay up indefinitely, same as the original 2014 Destiny. Existing loot, activities, and raids remain accessible. Bungie just stops adding to them.

The Riven Solo Exploit Everyone's Farming Right Now

Content creator Esoterickk surfaced a method letting players solo the entire Riven's Heart encounter in the Last Wish raid, no fireteam required. The Riven solo raid trick uses a Warlock with Icarus Dash and an Eager Edge sword to rush the wall where Riven spawns, then an out-of-bounds glitch known as the Universal Cannon Glitch to grab the heart and carry it back through a load zone with zero combat.

• Requires a Warlock build using Icarus Dash and Eager Edge to reach the out-of-bounds area quickly.
• Uses the Universal Cannon Glitch alongside the Void Soul Siphon Aspect to escape the heart repeatedly.
• Lets a solo player spend unlimited Ethereal Keys on chests, sharply raising drop odds for the One Thousand Voices exotic.
• Skips the entire combat encounter after Riven dies, which is either genius or an insult to the raid's design.

This is a Destiny 2 exploit Bungie almost certainly will not patch given the skeleton crew left maintaining the game. Expect it to remain a viable farming route for as long as anyone bothers to learn it.

With no new content coming, the D2 community hub is running its own event called Solstice of Legends from July 28 to August 18, filling the gap Bungie left after skipping the annual Solstice event. Bungie did at least drop Solstice-intended weapons through an engram, which is the bare minimum dressed up as generosity. A community-run roadmap is promised soon, because the studio's own roadmap for Destiny stopped mattering the moment Monument of Triumph shipped.

Quick Timeline

Bottom line: Bungie layoffs, a director's exit, and a fanbase resurrecting a shutting-down game harder than the studio's live title all landed in the same month. Somewhere a PowerPoint slide is calling this "restructuring for the future."