Today, after 10 expansions, three episodes, 30 seasons, and almost nine years, Bungie announced that Destiny 2’s live service development is coming to an end on June 9, 2026. It isn’t surprising news: To the culture at large, Destiny 2 has become less of a game in earnest and more of a measuring stick for its beleaguered studio’s dysfunction following years of blatant mismanagement, and Bungie’s prolonged silence as player numbers continued to dwindle had become deafening.
But it is sad news. As the culmination of Destiny 2’s long, downward spiral, it’s a moment of bitter finality for a game that I and many others had, at one point, loved best—even if it hadn’t been that game in years.
(Image credit: Bungie)
Destiny 2’s broadest appeal was as a showcase for Bungie at the height of its shooter craft and sandbox design, melding best-in-class gunfeel, deliciously sculpted space wizardry, and reactive enemies that remain a pleasure to perforate. As PC Gamer’s dear leader Tim Clark wrote in what, even after today’s events, is unlikely to be his last twitter rant on the subject, “If you only know Destiny 2 by its deservedly terrible reputation, then you have missed out on one of, if not the, best feeling PvE shooters of all time.”
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But I owe the almost 1,000 hours I’ve spent in Destiny 2 on Steam—and however many more I accumulated before it made the jump to PC—to where it directed my brain to wander as my fingers were occupied with the rhythmic percussion of shotgun blasts and void grenades.
Destiny 2’s gameplay is as much a matter of gunfeel as it is the knightly heraldry draped over Titan plate, the guns named “Parcel of Stardust” and “Alone as a God,” and the sense of history evoked by the Fallen crafting their servitors in the image of their itinerant orb-god. A game is more than the keys it asks you to push. It’s the way its nouns ping around your skull; the ominous poetry of its lore tabs and weapon names; its ability draw you to a halt halfway down a New Pacific Arcology hallway so you can consider a rusted Golden Age logo and what endeavors of its architects might have been left unrealized.
(Image credit: Bungie)
For me, that fascination extended as far back as the first firefight that broke out beneath House of Devils banners in Destiny 1’s 2013 gameplay reveal. In the years that followed, my idea of peak Destiny was a kind of moving, shooting meditation, savoring the unanswered questions prompted by its artists, writers, and sound designers as I contentedly roamed patrol zones and seasonal playlists.
But as early as 2022, it had started to become someone else’s game.
My Destiny 2 had already been gone.
Season of the Warmind marked a turning point, as Bungie started introducing rock-paper-scissors Champion mechanics and power level disadvantages into casual seasonal activities. In February 2023, ahead of the much-maligned Lightfall expansion, then-game director Joe Blackburn formally declared a sweatier shift for Destiny 2’s direction, saying Bungie was working to “bring challenge back to Destiny.” While that might have been celebrated by streamers and endgame enthusiasts, it signalled to me that my ur-podcast shooter was restricting its idea of how it thought I should be spending my time. Where I’d before been free to roam, I was increasingly being shepherded onto a treadmill.
(Image credit: Bungie)
Still, I remained an intermittent Destiny sicko through Final Shape—a successful capstone on a decade of storytelling that had seemed impossible as the internal carnage wrought by studio leadership became increasingly visible. But with every return I made, its joys were harder to find, hampered by hurdles like compounding prompts for microtransactions and item level economies that were only ever more baffling. In time, that treadmill had become a death march, ultimately metastasizing as the universally-despised Portal rework. And no, the Ghostbusters tie-in didn’t help.
I would say that Destiny 2’s final year of ill-conceived overhauls and game-wide Star Wars cosplay was a disappointment, but truthfully, I wasn’t around to feel the sting. My Destiny 2 had already been gone. Worlds I’d loved to wander had been vaulted; sights and sounds I’d known by heart had been replaced with lightsabers and Darth Vader armor sets; open questions I’d wondered over had been closed.
Before today’s news, I’d already done my share of mourning over Destiny 2. But its end-of-live-service announcement comes as a different, smaller sort of heartbreak. As of today, the distance it’s been forced to fall is a permanent one.
