Payback (game)

Payback was a spinoff game set in the Destiny universe.

Development

Payback was an "incubation project" set in the Destiny universe. Unlike the prior Destiny games, it would be played in a third-person perspective, and allow players to use the franchise's characters to explore the world while battling enemies and solving puzzles. The pitch took elements from games such as Warframe and Genshin Impact.

In April 2024, the existence of Payback was leaked. It was reported that the game would not use the class-based gameplay of prior entries.

In late 2024, rumors began to circle that Payback would have been a sequel to Destiny 2. While a Destiny 3 had been part of Bungie's original contract with Activision, Bungie terminated its contract with the publisher in 2019, and the idea of a "Destiny 3" was dropped. Payback, on the other hand, was a separate project, and so different from the first two games that had it been released (according to some Bungie staff) it would have been seen as a spinoff rather than a full-fledged third installment.

Payback was cancelled in June, 2024. The bulk of its development team was moved to work on Marathon. By this point, Bungie had carried out only preliminary work on the project. While Bungie experienced layoffs across the board at this point, these had nothing to do with the cancellation of Payback, which according to Jason Schreier, would have been cancelled regardless of Bungie's fortunes, and that the decision to terminate the game had been made prior to the redundancies.