Farewell Deej

Saying goodbye to the beloved Community Manager as he exits Bungie in the coming weeks.

My final edition of “This Week At Bungie” closes with a personal note about the triumphant conclusion of my nine years at your service:

“The next destination on my professional journey lies down another path, but I’ll always enjoy retracing the steps we’ve taken together.” https://t.co/saZtEfvX5o

— DeeJ (@DeeJ_BNG) October 15, 2020

On Thursday, October 15th, the new This Week at Bungie released containing the information you would expect to be in the weekly newsletter. First, it revealed the plans for the Beyond Light raid race followed by upcoming patches and community spotlight posts, but at the bottom of the weekly update was one final header, “One Last Time,” announcing this would be Deej’s last TWAB before leaving the company leading into the release of Beyond Light. While our time remaining may be limited with the Community Manager, let’s take a refreshing walk down memory lane to see where it all began.

On October 29th, 2004, David Dague, better known as XerxdeeJ at the time, joined Bungie.net leading into the launch of the masterpiece that is Halo 2. However, David would not join the Bungie team until November 2011. Deej joined the team as the Assistant Community Manager and since then has been in constant contact with the fans. Deej would oversee the community reactions to releases such as Crimson: Steam Pirates, Destiny, & Destiny 2. While that doesn’t seem like much this also includes every title update for both games in the Destiny Franchise. Since becoming a community manager, he has always been front and center for content reveals and sandbox changes no matter how grand or lackluster they were, even throwing a few jabs at Titans and Hunters for not being the master class.

Saying goodbye to Deej is truly an end to an era, not just for Bungie, but for Destiny as a whole. After 7 years with Bungie, Deej hangs up his hat and prepares to rejoin the community as another player on November 6th, 2020. If you haven’t already go give the TWAB from this week a read and read the farewell address yourself. In the coming weeks, we will likely see a new Community Manager step into his shoes if one isn’t already picked. Beyond Light will be the title release for Destiny since it’s released that Deej won’t be on board for release. How do you expect the community to react in the wake of his departure? And how do you feel regarding him leaving?

Image Source: The Show Radio