Nardin stated on X that she worked on both games and, despite similarities and "Bungie's DNA," they are separate projects.
The rumor appeared as part of a large anonymous post, which first appeared on 4Chan and was then compiled on Reddit. It stated that Bungie allegedly wanted to link Marathon to Destiny's Golden Age of humanity, bring back former Destiny developers, and use ideas from the alleged pre-production version of Destiny 3. It was also claimed that Marathon would become free in December and receive a permanent PvE mode called Investigations.
Nardin specifically denied the information about the merger of the two franchises, without commenting on the other statements.
In June, Bungie released the last planned update for Destiny 2 and announced that no further major updates were planned. Later, it became known that at least 292 Bungie employees were laid off.