Last week, in a very surprising announcement, Bungie stated its intention to wind down and in very short order end active development for Destiny 2. The game is going to get one more Age of Triumph update like Destiny 1 did and then go on maintenance mode for the foreseeable future. The reason for this is twofold: declining player population and the developer’s desire to devote its full attention to Marathon moving forward. Wrought with troubles and controversy as Destiny 2 has been, this is quite the interesting decision on Bungie’s part.

In a blog post on its official website and on its social media portals, Bungie laid out what’s going to happen with Destiny 2 over the next few months. First is the aforementioned Age of Triumph-like update. Players will get some remixed content to play through, new armors to chase and some new permanent additions to enjoy. One of those is, to my great shock, SRL (Sparrow Racing League)! Bungie has spent the last decade pretending that the mode never existed and now, here at the very end, they’re finally bringing it back. 

Honestly, better late than never, but I can’t help but think that Destiny 2 wouldn’t be in the state it’s in now had they been willing to continue implementing fun and different modes like this instead of just expending minimal effort to make players run the same content treadmills over and over again. As just about anyone who was (or somehow still is) a fan of Destiny will tell you, its story is one defined by missed potential.

There were so many cool and interesting ideas to explore in this universe, so many gameplay possibilities hinted at, yet Bungie’s dogged devotion to underdelivery and the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) model ensured that only a fraction of it was ever realized. If Bungie had remained the same company that made Halo, who knows what it could have accomplished.

But it wasn’t, and it didn’t, so here we are. Destiny 2 has been left to languish on the vine as a freemium cash cow for the past couple of years, has suffered massive population loss as a result, and is now no longer seen as financially viable enough for continued support.

Instead, the studio’s comparatively few resources (after several rounds of layoffs and more to come) are to be devoted to Marathon, a game which is less popular than Destiny 2 despite being brand new, has already been largely rejected by the mainstream audience and which occupies a very hardcore niche genre. By its very nature, Marathon is much less broadly appealing than Destiny 2, yet this is what Bungie is choosing to place its hopes for continued existence upon.

There’s always the possibility that Bungie turns Marathon around and makes it into an enjoyable experience for players that makes enough money to keep the studio alive, but it’s a long shot. I hope they can do it, but I just don’t think this version of Bungie has the capacity or mindset necessary to pull it off. So long as it remains committed to M.V.P., it’ll continue to flounder until Sony feels it needs to pull the plug. Until then, well, at least we’ve got SRL back.

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What do you think of this development? Do you think Bungie can still make a comeback?

Image from the Destiny 2: Beyond Light gameplay trailer