Destiny 2 Developer Bungie Files BungieCon Trademark

Bungie has been busy lately with Destiny 2, working to improve a franchise it has plans to expand upon beyond just gaming platforms. Bungie itself has recently undergone a studio expansion to help tell new Destiny stories, more than doubling the size of its headquarters. With the new expansion comes a new focus on where the Destiny franchise could flourish, and it seems like Bungie might be thinking about organizing its own "BungieCon" event to spread the company's influence.

Conventions are always massive draws for fans of a particular medium or franchise. Huge events like Comic-Con can bring in around 300,000 people, though Comic-Con has become more than just a comic-based event, attracting fans from all kinds of media to meet like-minded individuals and spend money. Though COVID-19 has caused many conventions to become online-only, including the recent BlizzCon 2021, they still offer the opportunity to reach out to fanbases to keep them excited for more upcoming gaming content.

Although Bungie's patent was originally filed back in July 2020, it recently received a notice for allowance to qualify it as a patent in December. Filing dates on a trademark website indicate that Bungie filed the BungieCon patent shortly after filing for patents of Destiny 2 expansion content, including the delayed Witch Queen expansion. Though patents do not necessarily indicate a company will use them anytime soon, or ever for that matter, the potential rewards a convention could bring seems too good for Bungie to pass up.

The patent goods and services description only contains a small section referring to "conducting fan conventions" but all of the other text includes mentions of memorabilia that Bungie might be able to make and sell at such an event. Covered under the patent is everything from clothing accessories to toys and trading card games. This kind of multimedia expansion could increase Bungie's brand even further and make it possible for the company to work on other titles outside of Destiny 2 if they so desired.

If the BungieCon patent is indeed the initiator for plans to host a convention, there is still the major hindrance of COVID-19. While online conventions still manage to connect with audiences, they lack the intercommunication fans get from seeing each other and taking pictures and videos of their experiences. If Bungie does plan on organizing a convention soon, it will most likely follow in the footsteps of Comic-Con and postpone in-person events until 2022. But there is no rush to introduce a new convention in the middle of a pandemic, and Bungie will probably wait to unveil BungieCon until further in the future.

Back in 2020, Bungie placed some Destiny 2's content into the Destiny Content Vault, which includes various raids. The Destiny Content Vault rendered the content inaccessible to Destiny players for the time being while Bungie updates them and gradually reintroduces it all back into the game. While some players were upset by this decision, Bungie maintained that its decision to do so would benefit the game and the respective content.

The weekly Bungie update revealed new information on upcoming content heading for Destiny 2 that comes with details on a variety of things. The update also revealed the Vault of Glass raid will be coming to the game with some improvements to it. Not only is the old raid returning in Season 14, but it will be updated to match the difficulty and current raid standards of Destiny 2.