Legendary Halo composer Marty O'Donnell is apparently considering retirement from the gaming industry "for good" according to a series of tweets that have since been deleted.
Marty O'Donnell is perhaps best known in the gaming world for composing the music for the original Halo trilogy. One of his other major projects was "Music of the Spheres," a series of songs for the first Destiny game that never got publisher approval and was quietly hidden away; fortunately for fans, this soundtrack leaked online in 2017.
Since his work on Halo and Destiny, O'Donnell hasn't done much in the way of composing music for video games until recently when it was revealed that he's working on the new version of Six Days in Fallujah alongside fellow former Halo developer Jaime Griesemer. Now, it looks like O'Donnell might be getting out of the gaming industry entirely.
Marty O'Donnell's Deleted Tweets Hint at Retirement, Legal Troubles
Threads on ResetEra and Reddit both highlighted a series of messages from Marty O'Donnell indicating that he was considering retiring along with an indication that he may have some legal troubles.
"I’m thinking about retiring from the games industry for good," O'Donnell said in a deleted tweet [Archive]. He subsequently stated that he'll be forced to shut down his YouTube channel in another deleted tweet [Archive], following these statements with a cryptic message to "ask Pete Parsons" in a third deleted tweet [Archive].
Finally, there's a cryptic message on his YouTube channel community page indicated that he has to deal with "huge legal fees," pointing people towards a non-functional link on his Bandcamp page. Fortunately, someone on ResetEra took a screenshot of what may be the original message including a deleted comment.
"If you buy this [Bandcamp item] for any amount you can help me pay my huge legal fees," O'Donnell said. However, the second portion of the message appears to have been edited out if the above screenshots are genuine: "Corporate bullying. Many things will disappear but not this (I hope)."
The above screenshot also shows a YouTube community message that mirrors one of his deleted tweets, indicating that he may be forced to shut down his YouTube channel.
That's everything we know so far, so that brings us to the big question: just what the heck is going on? The ResetEra thread says that he's recently been uploading music from Halo and Destiny, but the newest video on his YouTube channel is from a month ago; as a consequence, can't verify those reports. For now, we've reached out to Marty O'Donnell and Bungie and will update this article when we receive a reply.
What do you think of Marty O'Donnell's music? What's your favorite song that he composed? Let us know in the comments below!
