Destiny 2‘s mid-expansion update Shadow and Order has been delayed by three months after weeks of silence leading up to its originally planned March 3 launch. Bungie blames the wait on “large revisions” to address months of player complaints but it puts the loot shooter in an even worse position after an already terrible year.
Destiny 2 players are the fans who cried wolf. They’re always sounding the alarm even when things are going relatively well. But trust me when I say things have never been this bleak in the history of the soon-to-be 12-year-old sci-fi MMO. Its concurrent PC player count is at an all-time low. Last December’s Star Wars Renegades expansion was a neat story campaign but did little to fundamentally patch up the broader game’s crumbling framework. And a long-promised roadmap of the game’s future has been MIA for months.
Normally, a message from Bungie going, “Hey, we get it, we’re working on fixing things, it’s just going to take some extra time” would be the kind of thing that soothes some of the panic. Instead, Shadow and Order‘s February 18 delay announcement has only made everyone even more worried. “Our next Major Update, Destiny 2: Shadow and Order, is undergoing large revisions and will be delayed,” it read. “This update is being changed and expanded to include sizable quality-of-life updates and as a result, will also be renamed.”
Our next Major Update, Destiny 2: Shadow and Order, is undergoing large revisions and will be delayed.
This update is being changed and expanded to include sizable quality-of-life updates and as a result, will also be renamed. This update will now launch on June 9, 2026. We…
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) February 18, 2026
Bungie continued, “This update will now launch on June 9, 2026. We will provide exact details closer to release covering previously announced Weapon Tier Upgrading, but also additions like expanding Tiered Gear to all Raid and Dungeon activities, Pantheon 2.0, Tier 5 stats for Exotic Armors, and more. Through June, we will continue to have routine bug fixes and stability improvements, continued portal modifiers, Guardian Games (March), and the return of a more frequent Iron Banner cadence (April).”
This will be Greek to most folks, including any lapsed Destiny 2 fans that have been out of the loop for the last year, but it essentially suggests the studio is trying to overhaul some of the main loot chase complaints players have had since the current Year of Prophecy launched last July. We don’t get a clear idea of how that progression will be fixed, however, or a sense that Bungie itself knows yet.
The normal thing for Bungie to do right now would be a developer diary that lays out the team’s evolving design philosophy and explains what the next three months will be spent fixing. Instead, the announcement reads like a grudging, last-minute “the dog ate my homework” acknowledgement following weeks of fans begging for an update. Bungie actually deleted a weekly reset post recently because so many fans were dunking on it.
Cannot apologize enough for the delay here. Team’s still jamming. Hope to have some comms out soon.
Please continue to yell at me directly, and I say this without any sarcasm.
They’re focused on our immediate and long term future.
I am happy to take 100% of the blame here in…
— dmg04 (@A_dmg04) November 4, 2025
Some have wondered if Bungie is essentially trying to shift the spotlight from Destiny 2, its troubled but already long-established multiplayer hit, to the upcoming launch of Marathon, its first new shooter in over a decade. This way, the bad vibes surrounding the former don’t start contaminating the glowing potential of the latter. Maybe Bungie even hopes more Destiny 2 players will give Marathon a shot now that they have nothing new to play for the next three months.
Maybe, possibly, who knows? Either way, that only buys Destiny 2 a little more time before it has to come out and impress players with something. June would normally be the time frame for fans to get excited for the next annual expansion rather than dreading a potential “too little, too late” approach to last year’s leftovers. The fact that the game’s current existential crisis has some players once again wishing for Destiny 3 while others go back and re-grind through Destiny 1 tells you how cooked things are right now.
It doesn’t feel like there’s enough gas left in the tank to reignite the engine, and Bungie not coming out and confidently saying there is only adds to the doomerism.
