Bungie scrapping annual Destiny 2 expansions is the worst decision it could make

On July 31, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons announced that 220 roles at the company – or 17% of the studio’s entire workforce – would be eliminated.

The statement made two primary promises. That laid-off staff would be supported with the “utmost care and respect” and that Destiny and Marathon would henceforth be where Bungie would be focusing its “development efforts” going forward.

Interestingly, barring admittance of Bungie’s “quality miss” with Lightfall, nowhere does Parsons mention Destiny 2 specifically, but this shouldn’t be misinterpreted as an allusion to a potential sequel.

In an August 2 Bloomberg article, Jason Schreier, having spoken to ten former and current employees, learned that a canceled project codenamed Payback, which many fans had assumed to be Destiny 3, was never that at all. Destiny 3 has “not been in development” whatsoever, Schreier was told.

What does this mean? Destiny 2, for the foreseeable future, will remain Bungie’s flagship title and, until Marathon launches, its sole source of income.

Despite this, Schreier also learned from people familiar with the company’s plans that Bungie is “moving away from an annual release model” as a result of declining expansion sales.

Assuming that intent holds, the reaffirmation from Parsons that Bungie’s workforce will be redoubling focus on Destiny raises questions about what shape content will take in future updates.

The Final Shape was showered with critical acclaim when it arrived on June 4. Per Steam Charts, the number of average concurrent players on the platform in the same month of the expansion’s release surged to over 120,000, an almost 70% increase from the previous month.

Even Lightfall, considered one of Destiny 2’s weakest additions, increased the player population on PC by just shy of 90%. 

In both cases, retention dropped off substantially in the months following, however, therein lies the rub. Expansions are the biggest universal draws for Destiny 2 players. New, lapsed, existing; Guardians from every category are more likely to play when a title update drops.

How does Bungie intend to sustain its flagship IP without those and why the mixed messaging? How does a game receive more attention from its creator by cutting down on content it knows drives player engagement? It’s a self-defeating paradox.

The answer could be a pivot toward targeting growth through fresh blood.

“Bungie is instead looking to create a smoother onboarding process for Destiny 2, such as a rebranding, to attract new players who might be turned off by a game that can now feel impenetrable to those unfamiliar with its ample proper nouns.” Schreier was told by the same sources.

Destiny 2’s existing new player experience has become infamous for its obtuse, disjointed nature. As more content is added – and taken away to be stored in the Destiny Content Vault – the lack of clear direction for New Lights is dizzying, it’s true.

Destiny 2 does need a refreshed onboarding process, but, not at the expense of expansions. Doing away with the latter entirely runs the risk of signaling to players new and old that Bungie’s golden goose has been resigned to life support even if it hasn’t.

Now that it’s operating on a smaller workforce than before, Bungie may no longer have the luxury of doing both; forced to make a tough decision as a result. Whether it made the right one, only time will tell, however, whatever the outcome, the optics aren’t good.

Any wide-reaching changes in the near term are unlikely. Bungie’s immediate, relatively speaking, plans for Destiny 2 are already known. Three Episodes – Echoes, Revenant, and Heresy – will occupy players’ in-game time until early 2025.

The enigmatically codenamed Frontiers is scheduled to follow those. If expansions truly have been retired, Frontiers could be the first example of how Bungie intends to deliver smaller-scale DLC packs going forward.