Your limited understanding had you going to a Reddit post about a YouTuber deciphering a PR statement. Hoeg is generally good but he jumps to a lot of conclusions like Sony must have given up rights as a parent company because Bungie use words like "creatively independent."
He is a merger and acquisition lawyer. This is literally his field. You claim he's "jumping to conclusions", which is funny because that is actually exactly what you've been doing all this time. Your whole argument that the Bungie acquisition was without any terms or conditions is nothing more than assumption.
As I said, all independence means is they don't have managerial oversight and they get to self publish.
"Bungie will continue to operate independently, maintaining the ability to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play." If you're independently operating and independently self publishing, then Sony has no say in it. That's the very definition of independent.
Hoeg is a bit laughable in that video when he is harping on about having never seen the words independent in a M&A press release. Guess he missed all the ones from Tencent, eg:
You're blatantly misrepresenting what he's said. Here is what he's actually said:
"I don't know if I've ever seen a purchase that says, after we're done buying you, you get to operate independently and maintain your own, unilateral ability, to self-publish your content and decide what markets you are selling into."
Which is not what the press release in your example says at all, as it only describes independent operation.
Again, there's nothing different about this acquisition to a hundred others except Bungie wanted to manage their own publishing. Which makes them just like previous Sony developers like Sony Online Entertainment
I have no idea why you keep insisting as if it's completely normal for an acquisition for a platform holder will
remain full creative, operation and publishing independence, all while announcing it as a fully multiplatform studio. Because it isn't.
And to reiterate my earlier point, I never said Sony is going to suddenly make them go exclusive. I have said if COD goes exclusive in 10 years then this is a conversation Sony and Bungie will have as a result of the changing market conditions. Or who knows, maybe Sony will have a different killer app FPS by then and none of it will matter
Yes, Sony can alter that arrangement if there is no contract preventing that, but considering Bungies history and the very clear wording used in press releases and announcement from both Sony and Bungie, it is more than reasonable to assume that there probably is a contract that specifically says that Bungie gets to decide what to develop and what to develop for.
I'm just repeating myself now, so this will be my last post on the topic.