Bungie: “Destiny 2” gets its last update on June 9

“Destiny 2” will receive its last content update on June 9: Bungie announced the end of development for the online shooter on Thursday in a blog post. At the same time, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier reports, citing sources familiar with the studio, that a significant number of jobs are to be cut as part of this.

The last update is called “Monument of Triumph.” According to Bungie, it is intended to bring the story of the online shooter, originally released in 2017, to a conciliatory end: The Sparrow Racing League returns, raid, and dungeon loot will be modernized, new class abilities will be added, and a central director menu will replace the portal screen that many players rejected. The game itself will remain permanently online and playable, just as the first “Destiny” part is still accessible today.

No successor in sight

According to the Bloomberg report, the “Destiny 2” team has no project to switch to after the last update. “Destiny 3” is also not in immediate planning. Although employees have pitched new projects, including possible Destiny successors, nothing has been approved by parent company Sony so far. It is not yet known how many jobs will be cut. Bungie has not yet confirmed the move.

After almost twelve years since the release of “Destiny 1,” it became clear that “Destiny 2” also had to end, Bungie writes in the blog entry. The team is now focusing on the extraction shooter “Marathon,” which, according to Bloomberg, has not yet met the studio's success expectations. However, Bungie hopes that player numbers will increase.

Loss-making investment

Sony acquired Bungie in 2022 for 3.6 billion US dollars. The expectation at the time was that the studio would deliver a stable live service platform with “Destiny 2” and strengthen Sony in this segment. This has not happened: In the past fiscal year, Sony recorded an impairment of 765 million US dollars on the acquisition. Schreier points out that operating Bungie is particularly expensive for Sony due to, among other things, the high cost of living in Seattle and the long tenure of many employees.

For Bungie, this would be the second major wave of layoffs since the Sony acquisition. In July 2024, the studio cut 220 jobs – less than two months after the launch of “The Final Shape,” its most successful expansion to date. At that time, around 155 employees also moved internally to Sony Interactive Entertainment.

(dahe)