Bungie hires former ‘Valorant’ game director Joe Ziegler

Valorant game director, and the person credited with the original game concept, Joe Ziegler recently announced his departure from Riot Games, and has now revealed his next career move – joining the team at Bungie.

In a tweet announcing his new role, Ziegler said he was “working on new stuff that hopefully will one day get to be played by you all.” With increasing discussions amongst the Destiny 2 community around its PvP system, some fans hope Ziegler is being brought on to overhaul the heavily-criticised game mode. “Woah woah woah, wait, the director of Valorant?” one user wrote on Twitter, “Pls tell me you’ll save our PvP?”

Throughout his career at Riot Games, Ziegler has been widely credited with pitching the original idea for Valorant from the beginning as well as leading development of the project alongside David Nottingham. Whilst the game went live in 2018, development began in 2014. At the end of 2021, Ziegler announced he was stepping down as the game’s director to focus on an unannounced project.

Update: Happy to announce my new home is at Bungie working on new stuff that hopefully will one day get to be played by you all. Much <3.

— Ziegler (@Ziegler_Dev) December 19, 2022

Bungie is currently working on Lightfall, the new expansion for Destiny 2 which releases February 28, 2023. Lightfall introduces a new sub-class and is set in a futuristic new environment. Following Lightfall, Bungie will be focused on 2024’s The Final Shape DLC which presents the end of the current saga.

Alongside Lightfall, the developer is also working on a brand-new title, which according to recent job listings, is a third-person action game.

With Ziegler not stating which title he’ll be working on at Bungie, only time will tell but with his experience of hero shooters there are multiple projects he could bring valuable knowledge to.

In other gaming news, a mysterious tweet posted from Battlestate Games has sent Escape from Tarkov players on a secret quest that focuses on melee combat, whilst the game sees an impressive buff to melee weapon damage.