There were certainly signs that Destiny 2’s best days were behind it, but this week’s announcement that the shooter will no longer receive content updates still came as a shock.
The first-person shooter has been evolving for nearly a decade, and among the players devastated by the news are content creators who’ve built careers and communities centered on Destiny 2 commentary, criticism, and lore deep dives.
“I’m a little surprised,” said major Destiny 2 streamer Datto, who has 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, as he reacted to the news on stream. “I thought I would be ready to hear something like this, but I guess I’m just not.”
“It’s been my entire adult life,” a tearful Datto said later in the stream. “I graduated college, I worked in television for like two-and-a-half, three years, trying to grind my way up, and then the YouTube channel took off in 2014 … it’s all I’ve known, it’s everyone I know. 99% of my friends have come from this experience. My career has been this experience.”
Following Bungie’s announcement, we learned that development on Destiny 3 is not in progress. It could happen, but as Datto says during his stream, even if it does there’s little chance we’ll see it this decade. It’s at least a relief, the streamer said, to now know what Bungie is doing with the game so that he can plan for his own future.
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Other streamers and commentators are also considering what they’ll do next.
“What does this mean for me personally?” said Destiny 2 streamer Fallout, reiterating a question from his stream chat. “…We’ve been expanding into other games, thank Christ. I’m going to be making content for it as long as I can. Thankfully, my content on other games have been performing well. I am very fortunate to have this as my job. Very fortunate. This certainly changes things.”
In an email correspondence with PC Gamer, Destiny 2 “Lore Daddy” My Name is Byf, known for his deep investigations into the game’s storytelling, expressed support for the Bungie developers who care about the value of games as “art, a third space, a social experience, a fulfilling job,” but cautioned against forgetting, as a creator, that publishers don’t always value anything more than the bottom line.
The industry is so far from its best at current that it might as well be continents away.
Destiny 2 content creator My Name is Byf
“Developers who care, like the many who did within the rank and file of Bungie, will make something remarkable,” said Byf. “Publishers and management teams at their best will enable that brilliance. The industry is so far from its best at current that it might as well be continents away. By that same measure, the leadership team at Bungie in particular might as well have been on Mars.”
Byf also expressed support for movements like Stop Killing Games in the hopes that public pressure can prevent games like Destiny 2 from being made totally unplayable. For now, Destiny 2 will remain in operation, but Sony and Bungie could pull the plug on the servers at any time, and without at least a stripped down version of the game that players can operate themselves, that could be the end of it entirely.
Most of all, Byf and Destiny 2’s other biggest content creators are expressing appreciation for the game that once was and its community, and the feelings of loss they’re experiencing.
“Feeling like I was a part of the community helped me get through the darkest time in my life,” Byf said, “and being in the community at GCX (then Guardian Con, formerly Destiny Community Con) led me to the moment where I met my wife.”
“Destiny is the only game that ever made me want to create content,” said YouTube creator and past PC Gamer contributor Cool Guy, known for his in-depth commentary on Destiny 2’s weapons. “Not for views or a career, just to share something I genuinely loved with other people.”
Speaking to PC Gamer over email, Fallout said that he can’t imagine another game being as meaningful to him as Destiny.
“Destiny as a whole—not just the game, but the entire community itself—remains one of the most incredible and irreplaceable experiences I’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of,” the streamer wrote.
“I wouldn’t have ever become a content creator without the existence of Destiny. It attracted such an unexpectedly wide variety of awesome and passionate players. Speedrunners, lore-fanatics, competitive PvP demons, spreadsheet/number crunchers, podcasters, artists, cosplayers, musicians, and more. Just an incredibly wide array of players that you’d never really picture together all playing together under one roof, experiencing the awesomeness of what no other game had ever managed to deliver.”
Although Bungie has said that future games in the Destiny universe are a possibility, it’s not a sure thing. The studio is focused on its new extraction shooter Marathon, and according to a Bloomberg report, has not yet greenlit a new game for the Destiny 2 team to work on. Layoffs are expected at the studio.
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