Welcome back!  In part one of this series, you read about Bungie’s history of in-office and remote collaboration.  In this post we’ll lay out the core remote work dilemma that we faced in our planning for a new normal.
Disclaimer: This series presents a story from the perspective of a single discipline, Engineering. In fact, many groups at Bungie were simultaneously grappling with these challenges, with lots of independent experimentation and cross-pollination of thinking. In particular, “we” here generally refers to Bungie as a whole, unless explicitly discussing engineering.

Leading up to COVID, we were already straining at the seams of our existing facilities and were looking for solutions.  We took advantage of our COVID-abandoned offices to make more am... Read more

Remote, hybrid, return-to-office, oh my. Many people have strong opinions on what the future of work should look like, or how all the unknowns in the broader world are going to shake out. I don’t have all the answers, but I’d like to share how we’ve approached this tangled web for Bungie engineering.
Disclaimer: This series presents a story from the perspective of a single discipline, Engineering. In fact, many groups at Bungie were simultaneously grappling with these challenges, with lots of independent experimentation and cross-pollination of thinking. In particular, “we” here generally refers to Bungie as a whole, unless explicitly discussing engineering. 

Since this is a tech blog, I feel totally comfortable kicking off with…

Definitions

• Work-from-home (WFH): An arrangement where employees work anywhere other than an official company office.
  
• Remote (a.k.a. fully remote): Employees who are e...

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General

• This is a test, please ignore.
• We are testing some new tech for a different type of Hotfix.
• There are no hidden quests or things being added/changed.
• Seriously, trust us.
• If you want to go hunting, feel free.
• Don't come crying to us when you don't find anything.

General 

• Player investment data sustainability, localization, and performance updates.

Activities 

King's Fall

• Fixed issues where players could repeatedly die when revived during the Basilica and Oryx encounters while the encounter wipe happens. 
• Fixed an issue where the Overzealous Triumph requirement was unclear and could not be completed. 
• Fixed an issue where the selection of the rune during The Crux section of King’s Fall would prevent completion of the secret Deepsight weapon chest puzzle. 
• Fixed an issue where the King's Fall carries stat was not being incremented. 
• Fixed an issue where the following buffs and debuffs were missing icons: 
• Aura of the Unraveler 
• Aura of the Weaver 
• Unstable Light 
• Channeling Corrupted Light 

Gameplay and Investment 

Armor

• Fixed an issue where the Vallhund Exotic  ornament had an incorrect tooltip and was missing from the ornaments screen.
• Loreley ...

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• Fixed an issue where the Quicksilver Storm Exotic Auto Rifle could be obtained with a Power level of 0. 
• Fixed a server issue that could cause a delay in rewards arriving in a player's inventory.

Whoa! There is just a lot going on right now. With so many trailers, announcements, and big news beats going out today, we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss any of the awesomeness. Consider this your one-stop shop for everything we revealed today.  

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One Ticket to Neptune 

That was just a small sneak peek into Destiny 2’s next expansion, Lightfall. Prevent the apocalypse by racing Emperor Calus to Neptune and explore a totally new destination, the secret metropolis of Neomuna. This city was untouched by the Collapse, so its pristine buildings and neon-filled streets are very different from what players have experienced before. There are new places to explore and new characters to meet, like the Cloud Striders, the superhuman heroes that serve as Neptunians’ last line of defense. 
Stopping the end times won’t be an easy task. That’s why Guardians will have a new ... Read more

Like the inevitable lightning that follows storm clouds, Arc 3.0’s time has finally arrived. In 2022, the original trio of elemental subclasses that power Guardians in Destiny 2 have been undergoing a major overhaul. Void was the first subclass to get the “3.0” treatment with the launch of The Witch Queen expansion. Season of the Haunted welcomed Solar 3.0 and, soon, it will be time for Arc-wielders to receive their upgrades. The Destiny 2 development team has been hard at work on this subclass revamp, making sure that the new version of the Arc subclass brings the thunder.
Having lead subclass redesigns with Void and Solar, the team has spent a great deal of time zeroing in on essence of what a subclass revamp is all about: making sure that every aspect of gameplay and every ability and feature fits into the player fantasy. To get there, it all starts with inspiration. 
“Arc is really just, ‘go fast and hit stuff,’” said Destiny designer Sam Dunn, when asked a... Read more

(Not sure what this post is about?  Check out Living Bungie's Values as Engineers.)

We’ve arrived at the seventh and final Bungie value. How do we make our dent?
We're brave enough to challenge the status quo.

• With appropriate context-gathering, we’re brave enough to explore unfamiliar tech or try a change to any system, rather than always deferring to the top system experts.
• With appropriate humility, we’re brave enough to challenge existing ways of doing things and suggest new ideas, even in unfamiliar areas.
• This is intentionally in tension with, "We build the simplest thing that could possibly work." (From ...

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Solstice 2022

• Fixed an issue where players couldn't unlock the appearance of the Solstice armor sets to transmog.
• The beacons are lit, fashion calls for aid!
• Fixed an issue where players couldn't reobtain armor from Eva Levante (Space Grandma) if armor has been dismantled after completing the step where players need to speak with her, post-equipping.
• Fixed an issue where players weren't receiving the Seashore Pack at the Eververse store. 
• Players can now grab their loot from Cryptarch. 

Investment

• Progress accelerators are now in place for players completing Solstice Event Challenges on second and third classes (Titan, Warlock, and Hunter, for any new players). 
• Partially fixed, progress accelerator missing on Hand Cannon challenge for Titans. 
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to progress second and third character armor sets after fully upgra...

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(Not sure what this post is about?  Check out Living Bungie's Values as Engineers.)

Knowledge workers no longer have to accept a working environment that isn’t excellent. As individuals, this is an enormous privilege that we try to recognize. As Bungie, it gives us an imperative to actively drive our culture to be fun to spend time in. If you’re going to spend a large fraction of your waking life working, we believe work should include not just satisfaction but frequent and authentic joy, and we believe your work should be structured to support joy elsewhere in your life. How can we tilt the floor towards that in how we behave with each other?
We praise when we’re impressed and show ... Read more

Activities  

• Fixed an issue that prevented Silver Leaves from being awarded when completing certain activities. Hence the following activities now grant them: 
• Sever
• Altar of Sorrow 
• Nightmare Containment 
• Blind Well 
• Dares of Eternity 
• Patrols 
• Fixed an issue where The Investigation campaign mission could be exploited for Silver Leaves. 
• Added weekly rotating modifiers to the Bonfire Bash activity. 

Gameplay and Investment  

• Fixed an issue where this year's Solstice armor ornaments displayed a purple hue, rather than a blue one, when using a Stasis subclass.
• Fixed an issue where the Dream Work origin trait would activate for other weapons, allowing overflow for all gear equipped.  
• You all owe a certain dungeon boss an apology. 
• Fixed an issue where The Last Word was doing more damage than intended. 
  

... Read more

(Not sure what this post is about?  Check out Living Bungie's Values as Engineers.)

We spent more time to unpack this value than any other, because it’s a critically important area. We didn’t want to fall into the trap of saying uncontroversial positive-sounding things, or the trap of reiterating problematic cliches. Going back to one of the guiding principles of this whole handbook, as much as possible we want to highlight non-obvious tradeoffs or concrete expectations. And it took a while to describe the principles we try to live by in ways that we thought were both interesting and sufficiently nuanced.
We believe we build better games by actively working to be welcoming and in... Read more

(Not sure what this post is about?  Check out Living Bungie's Values as Engineers.)
Value #4, we’re past the halfway point!


This value raises a classically challenging tradeoff in engineering—we’re always trying to strike the right balance between idealism and pragmatism, haunted by the twin specters of overengineering and hacking. Unpacking this value turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for us to define our target balance in as concrete and nuanced a way as we can. Even beyond that, as we pondered this space, we discovered other critical parts of our culture that (as far as I know) we’d never written down.
We always close the loop.

• We do what we sa...

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(Not sure what this post is about?  Check out Living Bungie's Values as Engineers.)
You’re still here! Welcome! At this point you know what you’re here for, so let’s dive right in to...


When we first went over the Engineering Values Handbook as a team, we ended up in a multi-day all-hands chat thread digging into this specific value. It turned out that we were all pretty aligned on "loosely held,” but we had many different interpretations of "strong ideas"! Was it about strong advocacy, ensuring ideas get fair hearings? Brave proposals that challenge conventional wisdom? Thoughtful proposals that avoid being hot takes? This section of the handbook gave us an opportunity to get into th... Read more

(Not sure what this post is about?  Check out Living Bungie's Values as Engineers.)
On to the second Bungie Value!


How do we live this as engineers?  This turned out to be a bit simpler than Teams are Stronger than Heroes—we think it’s just these four main points.
Our technology ambitions are led by our creative aspirations.

• All our engineering work is ultimately in service of our games, including work on tools, data pipelines, game clients, operations, security, and servic...

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Activities  

Raids and Dungeons:  

• Moving forward, Grasp of Avarice dungeon will only drop a Pinnacle reward upon completion when it is the featured dungeon of the week. 
• Encounter completions during non-featured weeks have a chance to drop a Powerful reward.  
• You can learn more about the new rotator system in the previous TWAB here.  
• Vault of Glass: Fixed an issue where a Titan’s Solar Throwing Hammer could interrupt boss attacks from the Templar.  
• Fixed an issue where Sunspots could break immune s...

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Company values are a funny thing—they can so easily feel like insincere marketing, or wishful thinking of company leadership, or simply a list of generic positive attributes that any company might endorse—a thesaurus-check away from the Scout Law. In my experience, it’s rare for a company’s values to tell you something insightful about the company itself, and similarly rare for the values to have significant and sustained influence on how employees operate.
In that context, I’m pretty proud of ... Read more

(Not sure what this post is about?  Check out Living Bungie's Values as Engineers.)
Let’s unpack our first Bungie value! It’s a good one.


How do we live this as engineers?  Let’s look at the more specific ways we try to cultivate high-functioning teams.
We’re a culture of shepherds, eagerly helping and teaching.

• Shepherd is our word for an expert operating in a knowledge-sharing or guiding capacity.
• We celebrate explaining things clearly and efficiently.
• We empathize with the challenges others face, and recognize that offering assistance often moves us all forward.
• We value helping others, incorporating thi...

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Activities 

• The Wellspring: Attack: 
• Fixed an issue that could cause teams to incorrectly wipe on PED difficulty during the ritual disruption phase of Attack if they completed the objective with only a few seconds left on the clock. 
• Added failsafe to all carry objects in the ritual and boss phases so that they respawn in a reachable location if they are never picked up for 30 seconds. This should unblock the activity if they somehow spawn or fall out of bounds. 
• Altar of Reflection 
• Fixed an issue where the Altar of Reflection was not appearing, blocking players from completing Evidence Board Quest: Report: ALTAR-REFLECT 
• Lost Sectors 
• Fixed an issue where Rare (blue) engrams were dropping from PED Lost Sector chests 
• Vow of the Disciple 
• Fixed an issue where players could bring relics out of the Exhibition area. 
• Fixe...

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