Bungie Killed a Destiny Dating Sim Every Year

Every year, a small group of Bungie developers walked into a pitch meeting with a fully costed proposal for a Destiny dating simulator. Every year, leadership shot it down. According to two former staff members who shared the story on X, the concept had a complete pitch deck with development costs and projected returns, and it never got anywhere.

Former community manager Liana Ruppert first surfaced the anecdote, saying "the team actually made one but leadership was very Hard No that nobody wanted romance or silliness." She described it as "very Dream Daddy inspired," referencing the 2017 visual novel about dads dating other dads. Former senior narrative designer Robert Brookes then filled in the details: the original prototype came out of Bungie's internal "Carnival" event, a game jam-style week where developers built prototypes that could potentially become real projects.

What makes this more than a fun footnote is the persistence. Brookes confirmed the team pitched it as a full project annually, not as a joke but with real business data. "Myself and two other narrative team members (who both came from romance game design) had an entire pitch deck for one, complete with costs and real hard metrics on returns," he wrote. The answer was always no.

There's comedic about a leadership team so allergic to the idea of romance in Destiny that they rejected a detailed, costed proposal year after year. Romance visual novels are a proven market, and two of the people pitching it had actual professional experience making them. I'm not saying it would have been a blockbuster, but a low-cost spinoff with a built-in audience of millions seems like exactly the kind of creative swing a studio should take, especially one that was reportedly close to shutting down before Sony stepped in.

The revelations come as former Bungie staff continue to share behind-the-scenes stories following the end of active Destiny 2 development. Brookes noted the prototype was never a full project, but the yearly pitch cycle suggests genuine belief in the idea from the narrative team, even if leadership never shared it.