The Destiny community has been through it lately, so when a fresh rumor claiming Sony wants to build Destiny 3 using AI agents started making the rounds, people understandably lost it. The claim came from Kim Dotcom, who said he was passing along info from a “Sony insider.”
According to that post, Bungie would mostly be gutted, the remaining work would be handed off to AI agents, and the whole point of the layoffs was to slash costs while keeping the Destiny IP alive on the cheap. It sounds like a nightmare scenario for fans, and it spread fast. The only problem is that the actual Bungie reporter everyone trusts says none of it holds up.
Kim Dotcom Destiny 3 Rumor
The post making waves framed itself as a leak from inside Sony. The gist was that Destiny 3 is happening, but only after Sony clears out most of the Bungie staff, and that the sequel would primarily be made by AI agents rather than the developers who built the franchise. The reasoning offered was money. The Destiny IP is described as Bungie’s biggest asset, something Sony supposedly will not let die, while also wanting to bring team costs down in a big way.
On paper, it lines up just enough with reality to feel believable. Bungie really did get hit with massive layoffs, and Destiny really has been in a rough spot. That surface-level plausibility is exactly why this kind of rumor catches fire. When a community is already grieving, a story that confirms their worst fears does not need much evidence to take off.
Paul Tassi Responds and Debunks the AI Agents’ Claim
That is where Paul Tassi comes in. For anyone outside the loop, Tassi is the Forbes journalist who has basically become the go-to source for Bungie news. He has actual sources inside the studio and a long track record of reporting on Destiny, which is why the original poster tagged him directly and asked if the insider had any real credibility.
Tassi’s answer was short and to the point. He checked with his own sources and confirmed that the rumor is simply not true. There is no secret plan to rebuild Destiny 3 with AI agents, and the idea that the layoffs were some calculated move to replace human developers with automation does not match anything his contacts are telling him.
In other words, the spicy version of events that was tearing through timelines was made up, or at the very least came from someone with no real knowledge of what is happening inside Bungie.
The Real Reason for the Bungie Layoffs Is Way Less Dramatic
The Bungie layoffs were very real and very painful. Sony CEO Hermen Hulst confirmed in a letter that the cuts affected a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members, with Tassi reporting that more than 400 people were in the layoff call. That is roughly half the studio. So the human cost behind this story is enormous, and that deserves to be talked about honestly rather than turned into AI clickbait.
But the why behind it is far more boring than science fiction. According to Tassi’s earlier reporting, the decision came down to cold math. Destiny 2 costs more than it was bringing in, Marathon has struggled to hold a player base, and Sony had already written down hundreds of millions of dollars on its Bungie acquisition. This was a financial decision, not a plot to swap developers for AI, and definitely not some revenge play. Tassi has been consistent on that point for weeks, pushing back on the idea that Sony is punishing Bungie or scheming behind the scenes.
Is Destiny 3 in active development right now?
If you were holding out hope that this rumor accidentally confirmed Destiny 3, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Jason Schreier’s sources have repeatedly said Destiny 3 is not in active development and that nobody inside Bungie believes it is coming anytime soon. The studio reportedly explored ideas like a soft reboot called Destiny Infinity and even kicked around a proper Destiny 3, but none of it got greenlit. The estimated cost of building a full sequel, which Jason Schreier pegged at around 500 million dollars before marketing, basically ends the conversation before it starts.
The one sliver of hope, if you want to call it that, runs through Marathon. If Bungie’s extraction shooter can find its footing and prove the studio still has a viable future, that is the only realistic path where a Destiny 3 discussion could ever restart from a healthy position. New studio head Poria Torkan is now steering the ship, and a lot is riding on whether Bungie can stabilize.
During a chaotic news cycle, dramatic rumors travel faster than the truth, especially when they tap into something fans are already afraid of. The AI agents’ story checked all the boxes for outrage, but the moment an actual sourced reporter looked into it, the whole thing fell apart. Bungie is going through something genuinely difficult right now, and the people affected by these layoffs deserve better than having their situation spun into a fake AI conspiracy. So if you see the Destiny 3 AI rumor floating around, you can safely file it under nonsense.
