'I hope all your cars break down': Destiny players bid good riddance to departing Bungie CEO Pete Parsons in a rare moment of unity
Thanks to a decade of accumulated contradictory live-service grievances, Destiny players are rarely unified in their discontent. Today, however, is a special day: Bungie CEO Pete Parsons has announced his departure, offering the Destiny community a chance to join together in slamming the door behind the man whose leadership has become synonymous with studio mismanagement.
Appointed as CEO in 2016, Parsons' tenure brought hundreds of employee layoffs across multiple rounds of mass bloodletting, driven by the financial fallout of overextending Bungie's development resources across multiple "overly ambitious" incubation projects. Still reeling from that instability, Bungie has—in the last year alone—endured an art theft scandal, a Marathon delay, a Destiny 2 expansion launch that earned all-time player lows, and the loss of studio independence.
While presiding over the turmoil, Parsons allegedly spent more than $2 million on vintage cars. Suffice to say, there are plenty of Destiny players who think this particular executive officer's execution could use some work. It's no surprise then that the announcement of Parsons' resignation has been met with an outpouring of jeering, contempt, and the virtual equivalent of obscene gestures.
On the Destiny subreddit, the top-rated reply in the thread discussing the announcement simply reads "Eat shit, Pete." Since I started writing this article, it's received more than 200 additional upvotes. "I hope all your cars break down, Parsons," writes another redditor. On the PS5 subreddit, one user writes "Good riddance," to which another replies "TO BAD RUBBISH!"
On Resetera, the first reply to the news contains one word: "Good." On the Bungie forums, users are posting threads like "RIP car collection," where the original poster has written "Halleüjah[sic] pete parsons is gone." On X, quote tweets are full of celebratory GIF-posting. On Bluesky, the dunks are brief and potent. "He will not be missed," one user writes. "I do not wish him well."
This is Destiny we're talking about, of course. The tone of the conversation around Parson's departure isn't any more optimistic than Destiny discourse usually is, and already doomsayers are reading the appointment of new studio head Justin Truman as an omen of continued woe. And, in our world of golden parachutes, it's likely that Parsons will be departing Bungie in comfort after Sony's multi-billion dollar studio acquisition.
But it's nice to see there's something that can still bring Destiny players together in spirit.