‘Destiny 2’ Needs A Break That It Is Not Allowed To Have

On Thursday, Destiny creator Shadow circulated an open question on Twitter. What would it take to bring you back to Destiny, and make you hopeful for the future?

Easily, the most common response was “Destiny 3,” so much so it actually trended on the site. We’ve talked about Destiny 3 many times, and have recently confirmed through reporting that no, it’s not even in development, and Bungie is instead shifting its model dramatically. And…reducing it in scale.

As it stands, inside info points to something like a smaller expansion per year, something like Into the Light six months later and two episode-ish things in between. But the point is clear. Destiny 2 is not stopping. While Bungie may look at that as a point of pride, as a community member and decade-long player, it feels like more than ever Destiny needs a break. Time to regroup and refocus and come back with meaningful content or yes, a sequel.

The problem is that seems illegal. This is a live game. You stop running on the treadmill you fall and crash into the wall behind you. When a break is brought up, there’s a refrain that Sony bought Bungie and in turn, Destiny, to print money. But what’s happened is that the game’s burn rate is too high from constantly making content, and burnt-out players are not sticking around no matter what’s made. That’s especially true now in the wake of The Final Shape where if Bungie isn’t going to take a break, players will themselves. Destiny 2 peaked at just 30,000 players on Steam yesterday three months after a 314,000 peak for The Final Shape. Overall it seems like it’s headed for a lifetime low monthly player average, as we head toward the end of the month.

The thing is this isn’t really…fair to Bungie. Sony’s other studios are allowed to go years without releasing anything in order to craft the next big God of War or Last of Us or Spider-Man or whatever, and those games launch, make $70 and they’re done. Again, I know the purpose of a live game is to make more money than those games, but Destiny has been going non-stop for ten years now in some form or another. It should be allowed to go into maintenance mode for a while in order to come back with something exciting.

This does not seem like it will be allowed to happen. The future of Destiny with the Frontiers update feels pretty set at this point, and even if the Destiny team takes a break, there’s now Marathon to consider which both Sony and Bungie have a ton riding on. And guess what? That’s going to need constant updates too.

As a ten year live game spawning dozens of failed imitators, Destiny is remains a hugely important IP. But if it’s going to have a chance to see a real player surge and a refocused spotlight on it, it is going to need to do something else that slowly reduce non-stop yearly content in volume as it crawls toward…who knows, really. Because apparently it’s not a sequel.

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