In an announcement that has sent shock-waves throughout the industry comes word that Bungie is ending its partnership with Activision, with plans to go it alone when it comes to Destiny. As an independent studio Bungie is set to retain all rights to the Destiny franchise and as per the studio's own words will continue developing Destiny for the foreseeable future.

Here's an excerpt from Bungie's statement.

With Activision, we created something special. To date, Destiny has delivered a combination of over 50 million games and expansions to players all around the world. More importantly, we’ve also witnessed a remarkable community – tens of millions of Guardians strong – rise up and embrace Destiny, to play together, to make and share memories, and even to do truly great things that reach far beyond the game we share, to deliver a positive impact on people’s everyday lives.

We have enjoyed a successful eight-year run and would like to thank Activision for their partnership on Destiny. Looking ahead, we’re excited to announce plans for Activision to transfer publishing rights for Destiny to Bungie. With our remarkable Destiny community, we are ready to publish on our own, while Activision will increase their focus on owned IP projects.

The planned transition process is already underway in its early stages, with Bungie and Activision both committed to making sure the handoff is as seamless as possible.

In response to the news Blizzard has confirmed that Destiny 2 will continue to support the PC version via Battle.net. So, for the next few months or longer it should be business as usual in the land of Destiny. All parties are indeed putting on their best public faces to go along with this announcement, with Bungie hinting at a few surprising Destiny-related announcements coming sometime in the future.

No doubt the behind the scenes story here is the interesting and unknown quantity. What exactly happened? All we can go on is the most recent Activision financial earnings call to investors where the publisher called out Destiny 2 for failing to meet expectations and disappointing overall sales. We may never know the full story, in the same way Bungie previously split with Microsoft. It'll certainly be interesting to see where Destiny goes from here, now one of the biggest independent game franchises in the world.