Bungie is Not Really at Fault Over Destiny 2's Shutdown

Listen—the end of live-service support for Destiny 2 is frustrating, and there’s no denying that. We’re watching a game that, for many of us, occupied all or at least a significant portion of our last decade in gaming, so the aggravation is not only understandable, it’s entirely justifiable. However, regardless of how painful the inevitable end of Destiny 2 is, and despite how justified we are to feel this heartbroken over the situation, there’s really no excuse, nor is there reason, to spew hateful speech at Bungie, as if the studio is solely responsible.

It’s easy to see all of this as exclusively a Bungie problem, but it’s really not. In 2022, 100% of the developer’s shares were acquired by Sony, a company that ultimately moved forward with the buyout because it believed Bungie would help advance its live-service ambitions in light of the continued success of Destiny 2. Just shy of four years later, the game’s ongoing development is concluding with a final update in June, and on top of that, it seems Destiny 3 isn’t happening either. In other words, as easy as it is to pin the death of Destiny 2 on Bungie alone, Sony’s role in it all makes that conclusion a lot harder to defend.

Saying Goodbye to Destiny 2 is the Hardest Thing I’ll Ever Do in Gaming

Saying goodbye to Destiny 2 hurts because I’m not just leaving a game behind but a version of my life I can never return to.

Destiny 2’s End Is a Sony Problem, Not Just a Bungie Problem

The important thing here is not simply that Sony owns Bungie. It’s that ownership changes who ultimately gets to decide whether Destiny 2 is still worth the kind of investment players expected it to receive. Bungie can pitch new ideas, rework its live-service model, and try to convince players there is still life left in the franchise, but a studio under Sony’s umbrella is no longer operating with the same freedom it had prior to the acquisition.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

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That’s where the frustration around Bungie really only makes a little bit of sense. Players can blame Bungie for years of questionable decisions, and some of that criticism is completely fair. Destiny 2 didn’t arrive at this point because everything was going perfectly until Sony suddenly stepped in. Still, once the game became part of Sony’s portfolio, the biggest questions around its future became Sony questions too, if not even more so. As Bungie’s parent company, Sony was the company backing Bungie’s operations and deciding how much continued investment the studio’s projects were worth. To quote Hopper from A Bug’s Life, “First rule of leadership: everything is your fault.”

Sony Bought Bungie for Live Service, Then Backed Out When It Needed Help

Sony’s own financial position makes its role in all of this even harder to ignore. The company reportedly recorded a $766 million impairment loss against Bungie for FY2025, and an earlier roughly $198 million impairment was reportedly tied to Destiny 2 falling short of Sony’s sales and engagement expectations. In plain terms, Sony bought Bungie because it believed Destiny 2 and Bungie’s live-service expertise would help justify a much bigger live-service future, then had to lower Bungie’s value on its books when that future stopped looking as profitable as it initially expected. So, while Bungie’s mistakes helped put Destiny 2 in this position, Sony is the company that seems to have looked at those numbers and decided the franchise no longer justified the same level of investment.

That doesn’t mean Sony killed Destiny 2 out of spite, and it also doesn’t mean Bungie gets to walk away from its own mistakes. The more realistic version is less dramatic, but probably more accurate. Sony bought Bungie expecting Destiny and Bungie’s live-service expertise to carry a certain value, then seems to have reassessed that value once Destiny 2 and Marathon no longer matched those expectations. In that context, Destiny 2‘s final update is the visible result of Sony deciding how much more runway Bungie’s most important franchise deserves.

Once the game became part of Sony’s portfolio, the biggest questions around its future became Sony questions too, if not even more so.

That’s why blaming Bungie alone misses the larger picture. Bungie may have put Destiny 2 in a vulnerable position, but Sony is the company now deciding what that vulnerability means. If Destiny 2 is ending active support, Destiny 3 is reportedly not in development, and Bungie truly is facing more layoffs, then this is about a franchise being measured against Sony’s expectations and apparently coming up short.

Destiny 3 Was the Future Players Needed, But Sony Apparently Didn’t Greenlight It

Of course, one could say, “If Bungie had done better with Destiny 2, then Sony wouldn’t have had to make the unfortunate decision to shut it down,” and perhaps, from a certain perspective, that’s true. Bungie made plenty of mistakes over the years, and Destiny 2 didn’t end at its final update by accident. The game struggled with content vaulting, onboarding issues, seasonal fatigue, uneven expansions, and a long-running sense that it was becoming harder for anyone outside the most committed players to keep up with it.

At the same time, Sony bought Bungie knowing Destiny 2 was an aging live-service game, and that means Sony also bought the responsibility of deciding what its future would look like after the release of The Final Shape. That expansion was the cleanest transition point the franchise was ever going to have, as it wrapped up the Light and Darkness saga and gave Bungie a natural opportunity to move players from one era to the next. If Sony truly believed Destiny was still worth building around, that would have been the moment to protect its investment by greenlighting Destiny 3, or at least moving Bungie toward a major new Destiny project with a clear future attached to it.

At the very least, what that would have done is it would have given Destiny 2 players hope for what was to come, and they likely would have remained committed to the game in spite of its faults. After The Final Shape, many players felt that Destiny 2 had reached a point where it should have ended, but that was actually only contextualized by the content that followed. The majority agreed that everything Destiny 2 was trying to accomplish after its final major expansion didn’t create enough of a future for the live-service game, and the player count dwindled as a result. However, had they known Destiny 3 was in the works, perhaps that content would have been enough to keep them interested, as they would have at least known the franchise had a bigger long-term goal worth investing in.

Sony bought Bungie knowing Destiny 2 was an aging live-service game, and that means Sony also bought the responsibility of deciding what its future would look like after the release of The Final Shape.

That’s what makes the reported lack of a Destiny 3 greenlight so important. According to recent reports, Bungie doesn’t currently have Destiny 3 or another specific new project greenlit for the Destiny 2 team, with the studio instead expected to begin incubating future projects after Destiny 2 receives its final live-service content update on June 9, 2026. That doesn’t prove Bungie formally pitched Destiny 3 and Sony rejected it, but it nonetheless means that the next numbered Destiny game apparently was not approved in time to give the franchise a future.

So, yes, Bungie’s past decisions helped put Destiny 2 in this position. Still, Sony had a chance to decide that Destiny‘s future was worth fighting for beyond the limits of an aging live-service game, and from what is publicly known, that’s not the choice it made. Destiny 3 may have been the clearest way to convince players that Destiny was still a franchise with a future, rather than a game being preserved after its most important years had already passed. Without that, it’s difficult to place the blame on Bungie alone, because the future players needed was ultimately something only Sony had the power to fund.