Destiny 2’s Cancelled DLC Is Even Sadder Than You Think

Destiny 2 fans have gone through a rough patch lately, especially in light of the surprise announcement that Bungie is dropping all upcoming content from the title. Launched in 2017, frequent updates and seasonal content have kept the Destiny 2 player base alive and strong for years. However, it seems like Bungie and Sony are doubling down on Marathon and allowing Destiny 2 to conclude — even if the game itself will at least still be playable.

If Destiny 2 had been given a runway for fans and developers to make peace with, similar to what Amazon Games is doing with New World: Aterium, it would at least give everyone a chance to properly bid farewell to Destiny 2‘s world. However, the suddenness of the announcement caught players and developers by surprise — especially because the latter were actively working on new content for the game that will now never see the light of day. This is just the latest blow to the game development community in an era full of them, speaking to some of the greatest challenges facing game makers today.

Destiny 2’s Team Thought The Game Still Had A Future

The end of active content drops for Destiny 2 is coming up on June 9th. “Monument of Triumph” will serve as the final bit of new content for the nearly ten-year-old game. While Destiny 2 will remain active online for players to explore and play through, there won’t be any more new missions or content — which came as something of a surprise to the team working on the game. Despite Bungie leadership’s decision to drop the game from continued active development earlier this year, reporting from Forbes suggests that the Destiny 2 developers weren’t immediately informed of this decision. As a result, work continued on future expansions.

This includes “Shattered Cycle,” which was set to be released later this summer and was likely close to completion when the news spread through the company. In fact, it sounds like many employees at Bungie found out about Destiny 2 having future content discontinued at the same time as the general public. While some specific members of the Destiny 2 team had been informed of this decision and were able to work on the final Destiny 2 update for June, some of them had already been pulled from the game and moved over to Marathon. The reporting suggests that those members of the Bungie team had begged the company leadership to inform more people at the studio, describing the ensuing environment as divisive within the company.

The fact that this announcement has come alongside apparent confirmation that Bungie will be going through layoffs only made the situation harder for the developers working on Destiny 2, as any work on a larger roadmap was discarded, and they may soon find themselves out of the company. It’s a bad look for Bungie leadership, who come across in the situation as callous towards their employees and their fans by deciding to end the long-running game without giving the team or the players much of a heads-up. However, it is unfortunately consistent with the general tenor of the modern games industry.

Game Developers Are Suffering In The Modern Industry

Despite becoming one of the dominant forms of mass media entertainment in the world, workers in the gaming industry have been suffering lately. Even beyond the increasing costs of development and the oversaturation of the market, employees across the board have been suffering from challenges. While there is definitely pain being felt across the industry at large, the executive level has a level of cushion that many day-to-day developers don’t. Crunch time has become synonymous with major releases, despite years of evidence that it can have detrimental effects on game makers. Sometimes, developers don’t get paid for their work upon completion, instead relying on the company to turn a profit before they get what they were already contractually obligated to earn.

Other times, developers on successful games can find their studios shut down as part of overarching corporate maneuvering, such as Tango Gameworks being shuttered despite Hi-Fi Rush becoming a quick critical and commercial success. Efforts to manufacture live-service hits have resulted in collapses like Highguard and Concord, with the resulting studio closures leading to sometimes hundreds of layoffs. Even nearly completed games, like The Prince of Persia remake from Ubisoft, were shuttered despite years of work and millions of dollars being poured into production — leaving newly unemployed developers with little actual work to show to prospective new companies.

The Destiny 2 situation underscores just how widespread this issue has become, with the leadership at the company allowing the team to continue working on content they knew would never see the light of day. It speaks to, at the very least, an apparent lack of respect for the developers themselves, who make the games possible in the first place. This also highlights how some companies have become comfortable with hiding major business decisions from their workers. Efforts to combat this with unionization efforts have been mixed, with outlets like Kotaku reporting that studios like Rockstar have been accused of union-busting. Destiny 2 is an especially disheartening turn. While players seem to still appreciate all the work the team has put into Destiny 2 over the years, it’s sad to see so much work go to waste.