On September 9, 2014, Bungie released a game that no one really understood, even Bungie itself, it seemed. The game was Destiny , a looter shooter that was not quite Diablo , not quite Borderlands , not quite Halo but something else entirely. It would take months and years to decipher what that something was, but it spawned expansions, DLC, seasons, and a sequel over the next 12 years.

It didn’t quite make it there. Destiny 2 released a final Monument of Triumph in June 2026, a last hurrah before end-of-service, when Sony pulled the plug and soon after, laid off half the staff at Bungie as veterans left the company with vested stock from the original sale of the studio. It left fans bewildered, as even if the numbers were down, completely axing the game and shedding its entire team seemed almost unthinkable.

I’ve said before that this is one of the most bizarre industry situations I’ve ever seen when it comes to a long-running IP. There were plenty of failed live games and looter shooters over the years, most of them aping Destiny itself. You could make the argument that it was time for Destiny 2 to go, perhaps after The Final Shape itself, the end of its Light and Darkness saga. A core group of players would have played forever, and they should be given something to play.

But it wasn’t just closing down Destiny 2 , it was doing so in the middle of Sony having an awful run in its live service ambitions. Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Factions was cancelled after delaying the studio’s next single-player game. The same goes for Guerrilla Games, with the next Horizon game pushed back as it made the live-service Horizon Hunters’ Gathering , a game that is currently floundering and is reportedly being retooled. And of course there is Concord , which may quite literally be the worst video game launch of all time. Years and hundreds of millions spent in production for a game that had such a low playercount it shut down in two weeks. Sony’s only real live success was Helldivers 2 , which wasn’t made by a first-party studio, and that studio is not making its next game with them.

Why then, butcher the Destiny playerbase, which has at least on and off, been devoted to the game for over a decade? Even if it wasn’t what it once was, the series is one of the biggest live-service successes ever. I have been unable to think of another example of a game that ran this long with this many fans that was killed without the announcement of any sort of future, be it small content updates or any new IP projects, including the much-wanted Destiny 3 . Sony and Bungie did not and have not announced anything of the sort.

Fans aren’t willing to let go. The excellent Monument of Triumph update spiked the game’s playercount beyond the levels of its last two DLCs. Destiny fans, three months later, are spamming Sony social media accounts and showcase livestreams with demands for more Destiny, annoying some, but demonstrating continued passion. There is certainly more of a devoted fanbase still left, pushing for more content from the world, than there is support and enthusiasm for Marathon , now Bungie’s only game, an extraction shooter which has struggled mightily since launch, and which many believe may not be able to survive too much longer.

I suppose I could have made this birthday post a fond reflection of my time with the game and how it is the cornerstone of my entire gaming career, but I’m still just angry. It feels like a mistake, it feels like there should have been, or should be, an answer here. Many are not giving up, and we’ll have to see what the future holds.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .