Destiny 2 Just Became More Than Just A Game

This week Bungie announced that they'd be moving beyond the traditional model for games – beyond what we've come to expect from any major gaming developer. In the past, they'd release a new game every year, or a new game every few years. This was fine, when games were offline – and it's been acceptable even through more than two decades of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. With Destiny 2, Bungie's changed the way gamers will expect games to evolve.

Bungie announced in June of 2020 that they would not be creating a Destiny 3. Or at least they would not be putting time into developing a Destiny 3 any time soon. Instead, they suggested they would put all their available Destiny-centric resources toward Destiny 2, a game that's been released and active since the year 2017.

"We believe now that it was a mistake to create a situation that fractured the community, reset player progress, and set the player experience back in ways that took us a full year to recover from and repair," wrote a representative of the Destiny 2 Dev Team. "It's a mistake we don't want to repeat by making a Destiny 3."

Bungie promised that Destiny 2 will be active and updated "years" into the future. Bungie guaranteed that they'd have at least three more major expansions to the game. Destiny 2: Beyond Light will be released this year – 2020. In the year 2021, there'll be an expansion called Destiny 2: The Witch Queen. In the year 2022, there'll be another update – this update's "working title" is Destiny 2: Lightfall.

We've entered into an age where a game developer's dedication to a game is more important than the release of a new game. We've seen this switch happen in the mobile gaming space, with cloud gaming, and with subscriptions in several major tech markets. At this time it does not appear that Bungie is considering a subscription cost for Destiny 2 – it would appear that they're sticking with alternate means of income – like Destiny 2 Silver.

Have you seen Ready Player One? The world is going to be like that – it's up to companies like Bungie to create the global communities in which we live, and Destiny 2 is a great example of an early iteration of what this universe will become. See also: Pokemon GO, World of Warcraft (WOW), and Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet.