Yesterday Bungie surprised the world by announcing the intention to drop Activision as a publishing partner for the Destiny franchise and a reaction from the market was to be expected. In fact, it did come, hard and fast.
The trading session has just been closed at the New York Stock Exchange, and Wall Street reacted violently to the news, as you can see below.
Activision Blizzard stock was at $51.35 at yesterday’s close, but it had already collapsed to $46.38 during the pre-session. It then dropped all the way to the lowest point of $44.47 before gradually recovering to a closing price of $46.54.
While the price didn’t stay as low as it could have, that’s still a loss of $4.81 per stock, which translates into a massive 9.37% drop.
While the market operates on its own rules, which certainly don’t translate one-to-one with the effects on gaming, this is certainly a strong reaction to yesterday’s news. It’s likely that the price will gradually recover over the next week, but it’s obvious that part of the investor base saw the divorce with Bungie as bad news for Activision.
Whether it’ll be good news for Bungie itself, remains to be seen. Self-publishing isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
One more person who reacted quite strongly to the news is our boss Ed, who as our resident Destiny fan provided his opinion on what’s going to happen, and on a few annoying issues that might finally disappear in Destiny 2.
If you’re not familiar with the franchise, you can check out our review of Destiny 2, and the one for the Forsaken expansion.
Destiny 2 is currently available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
