Destiny 2 Fix Coming This Summer To Preserve Work-Life Balance

A fix to an exotic weapon in Destiny 2 is likely slated for July, but the timing is uncertain right now because the studio is weighing its culture and work-life balance.

Game director Luke Smith answered a question about a fix to the Lord of Wolves weapon in a livestream for the charity convention GuardianCon. He suggested that while the studio could use a patch that's already near-finalized to add the weapon fix as well, that might be too difficult on the studio.

"We're looking at this summer, something like July," Smith said. "We have a patch that we're readying right now, the patch is going to come out in a couple weeks. We could take the patch off the patch factory, more or less, and ask people to work super long and add this thing in. And we're having the conversation that, 'Is it worth doing that or is it better to preserve the work-life balance and ship it later in July.'"

He went on to say that the cost-benefit analysis of working long hours is complex, and the studio doesn't like to take patches out of release candidates very often. In fact, he said, the studio just did it for a different feature, and he's not sure if it's healthy for the studio to do it back-to-back.

The Lord of Wolves weapon had an adjustment that made it much more powerful than intended, which makes it imbalanced in the PvP Crucible mode.

Working long hours at a game studio to meet a release target is known as crunch. Development crunch has been a hotly discussed topic in the industry recently, with one such subject being an ongoing crunch mode at live games like Fortnite. Studios have been opening up more about their culture and attempts to stave off crunch, and with this Bungie has indicated that it uses the strategy but tries to limit it.

The GuardianCon fundraiser, meanwhile, brought in well over $3 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, with a boost from Bungie's block of time providing almost half a million.