Just a month after the departures of game design lead Josh Hamrick and senior gameplay designer Jon Weisnewski, two more high profile Bungie employees have walked out the door.

Bungie's Raid design lead Joe Blackburn, who has been in charge of or involved with the development of the massive endgame content quests for all releases bar Destiny's Vault of Glass, revealed late on Friday afternoon he would be leaving the company this week.

"After an amazing journey, today was my last day at Bungie," he said on Friday afternoon as close-of-business inched closer. "I can't express how much Destiny, and the people that work on it, mean to me. I can't wait to see what's next alongside all of you."

Blackburn's involvement in the world of Destiny had included Crota's End, King's Fall, and Wrath of the Machine. The raid master also guided the development team for all Destiny 2 raids so far, including Leviathan, Eater of Worlds, Spire of Stars, Last Wish, and the recently released Source of the Past.

Less than an hour later, more news on staff departures dropped. This time, it was narrative lead Jill Scharr that revealed she would be leaving Bungie after more than four years with the video game company.

"The years working on Destiny have been incredible," she said. "Now, after six releases, today was my last day at Bungie. It's time to say... "Fare-Thee-Well."

"I'm not good at talking about my feelings, which is why I make fictional characters talk for me, but I'm so thankful to Bungie and all the incredible badasses I've had the privilege of working with."

"This isn't goodbye. We'll always be family."

Scharr had joined the Destiny writing team with the release of the major expansion The Taken King at the end of the first title's lifespan. After TTK (2015), she worked on Rise of Iron (2016), as well as the base Destiny 2 content (2017), Curse of Osiris (2017), Warmind (2018), and the major Forsaken release at the end of last year.

While it's not clear whether Blackburn's role has been filled behind the scenes, Scharr's replacement has already been named. Aaron Linde has been confirmed as the new lead writer and narrative designer within Bungie's structure.

Linde joins the sci-fi game's story department with a number of major games already under his belt. As well as designing Guild Wars 2's Living World episodes, Linde led Gearbox's Battleborne narrative and was a design consultant for the popular action-adventure Lord of the Rings title Shadow of Mordor.

The incoming narrative writer won't be left in the dark, however. While Scharr, Blackburn, Weisnewski, and Hamrick have all left in the past four weeks, a number of other high profile staff still remain.

Notably, Christopher Barrett is still with the company as the director of the live team, while Luke Smith is still guiding the entire world of Destiny as the main game director.

Considering how many departures there have been in recent weeks, however, doom and gloom have spread over the Destiny community. Many believe these developers are looking to "get off a sinking ship" ahead of some major revelation about the company. Others simply have resigned themselves to the fact that, in their heads, this means that "Destiny 3 is going to be shelved indefinitely for some other new IP."

While that may eventually be the case, for now, it's quite clear Bungie is still strongly committed to their most recent science-fiction franchise. In their recent split with Activision, Bungie was forced to pay out net bookings ($20 million), GAAP revenues ($164 million), and GAAP operating incomes ($91 million) ahead of December 31, 2018.

In total, Bungie's separation from Activision, and their desire to keep the Destiny IP under their control for the foreseeable future, set them back a whopping maximum of $275 million. It's not been confirmed whether Bungie shouldered the entire cost of this split, but if they did their direction clear. That much money doesn't get shuttled off to keep an IP, just to sentence it to a death knell less than six months later.

Rest assured Guardians. As long as there aren't too many more high profile staffers heading out the door, Bungie will continue on with the Destiny story and universe. And even if there are more departures, there's no guarantee that's a negative - maybe some things do need to be changed behind the scenes.

Whatever happens, Destiny will remain in one form or another. It's just not that clear yet what capacity that may be in over the next few years.

Image 1 courtesy of @joegoroth; Image 2 courtesy of @JillScharr.