Destiny 2 fans are both celebrating and mourning the recent set of reveals that show that the game’s final update in June is shaping up to be its best in years, bringing back loads of beloved loot, making huge changes to core systems and in general, granting fans wishes they’d requested for ages.
And then, it’s over.
Destiny players will get to experience these additions for the indefinite future. The servers of the game are not being shut off (and Destiny 1 still being online indicates they won’t). But whether it’s weeks or months, the game will inevitably dip below its current record-low playercounts with nothing at all on the way to potentially increase that.
Truly, nothing. Destiny 2’s comms account confirmed that this is the last update in almost any sense. They said there will be small bug-fixing patches, but no one is even showing up for something as mild as a balance pass on the gear that’s about to be buffed and nerfed, apparently for the final time.
While fine, we can acknowledge that large-scale support for Destiny 2 is ending, acting like this series is Anthem or Marvel’s Avengers hitting a wall with absolutely zero support in the future is a mistake. This is an 11-year franchise, and even if it’s time to wind Destiny 2 down in favor of other projects, cutting out the entire team, which will likely happen through large-scale layoffs or migration over to Marathon, is abandoning what remains a valuable IP which only peaked in attention and playercount a mere two years ago. And any significant declines since then were largely due to the drastic pulling of resources (bad decisions like The Portal would not have been made had there been the support for further seasons or episodes).
Some sort of team kept on to manage Destiny 2 in its “maintenance mode” seems like the bare minimum Sony should be giving the game. A small update here and there. Some new loot. A new activity from time to time. Some story beats. We’re not talking expansions, full seasons, cinematics here. But the game now moving to “bug fixes,” with players meant to be grateful they’re leaving the servers still on is awful.
My hope is that there’s some way Sony realizes this is what should be done. I’m reminded of the not-live Cyberpunk 2077, where CDPR repeatedly said there would be no more updates for the game, but kept periodically sneaking them in regardless. Some have pointed to Terraria as another example. The difference there being that those games did not suffer hundreds of layoffs after they were “finished,” and some like Cyberpunk were able to bring in support studios to help. Sony seems like it will offer Destiny none of that.
I’ve said before that I think it’s a mistake to throw what appear to be all Bungie’s remaining eggs in the Marathon basket, especially so given what’s coming in this new Destiny patch. But if we’re acknowledging Destiny 2 is never going to receive the content updates it used to, giving it nothing seems pretty absurd in the context of the series and fanbase. But I do not expect Sony to change its mind, regardless of 300K signature petitions or mass movements to attempt to hit high playercounts on June 9. Which is a shame, and a mistake.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.