Marty O'Donnell created the music and audio for the Halo and Destiny games. Pictured in 2015.
Marty O'Donnell created the music and audio for the Halo and Destiny games. Pictured in 2015.
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O’Donnell case is a window into Activision-Bungie creative-freedom dispute

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 7 min

Tension between creative freedom and business is often the norm with publishers and developers. In the alliance between publishing giant Activision and famed development studio Bungie over the shooter game Destiny, that tension was evident again because of a court case that gave a rare look inside the relationship between companies.

A legal battle between composer Marty O’Donnell and Bungie exposed this battle after court records were released on Friday. O’Donnell prevailed in winning back his lost pay, profit-sharing, and founder’s stock in Bungie, which the company tried to deny him last year after it fired the creator of the music for Halo and Destiny.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.