Bungie, a Sony Group subsidiary, is reportedly set to end regular updates for Destiny 2 and plans substantial layoffs within the game's development team as it shifts focus to Marathon. This decision follows its underwhelming March release.

According to the report, the last regular update will hit the servers on June 9, and Bungie is set to stop any further development work on Destiny 2.

"While our love for Destiny 2 has not changed, it has become clear that after The Final Shape, we have reached the time for our shared worlds, and Destiny, to live beyond Destiny 2," Bungie wrote in a blog post.

Bloomberg also reported that Bungie currently has no plans for Destiny 3 or a direct successor within the Destiny universe.

The game's user base has declined since its 2017 release, with current daily peaks hovering around 20,000 players across all platforms despite the series generating over $500 million in revenue for Bungie.

This user count shows a sharp difference against its all-time peak of 316,750 concurrent active players. The Final Shape expansion, meant to be a conclusive arc for Destiny 2, has not received a good response either, resulting in a drop in the user base.

Since the acquisition by Sony, Bungie has already gone through spells of layoffs and cost-cutting, while Sony also pulled pipeline projects like Payback, which was set in the same Destiny universe.

Bungie To Shift Focus To Marathon

Marathon is a reboot of the popular Bungie franchise of the same name, albeit featuring multiplayer gameplay.

Early impressions of Marathon were positive and it received praise for its gunplay mechanics, cross-play support, and visuals, but many players felt the extraction shooter direction moved too far away from the original story-driven Marathon series.

According to SteamDB, Marathon peaked at around 88,337 players on launch day before dropping to roughly 10,000 to 20,000 daily players on Steam.

Bungie still has a foundation to build on, but games like ARC Raiders may offer a better example of how to sustain interest in the extraction shooter genre.

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Written by

Abhisek Bajaj

Edited by

Pulkit Prabhav