The writing has been on the wall for Ryan since his falling out with Marty O'Donnell. If you're going to get rid of a senior employee (and major stakeholder in the company) you make sure you honour the contract to the letter. What you don't do is first try to bully him into signing away his stock, bonuses and contract, then when that fails lock him out of his own office on Monday morning, tell him he's fired, his contract is null, he no longer owns any stake in the company and you'll be keeping all the pay and bonuses you owe him, just cuz. The outcome of that is he will take you to court, name you personally in the filing, win and then you're stuck with a guy who owns part of your company having a very personal and justified vendetta against you, while you have to explain to everyone else why you did it and where all that money for both the contract you have to honour and the damages are coming from. Given that this all started because O'Donnel had a falling out with Activision, maybe Ryan should have stood up for Bungie a bit more and he'd still have O'Donnell on side and a better Destiny, maybe.
