Slipped in quietly amidst today's big news about the next major Destiny 2 expansion, Lightfall, and the new Season of the Plunder that started today, Bungie has announced that it will no longer remove expansions from the game in the future.
The practice of culling content from Destiny 2 was announced in 2020 as a way of dealing with bloat: Destiny 2 is a huge game, and with plans to continue growing it for the indefinite future, Bungie decided that the only way to keep it manageable, for developers and players alike, was to shunt older content into the Content Vault. Going forward, that's going to change.
"We've also been working on the Destiny engine behind the scenes, preparing our technology and our game to last for many, many years to come," general manager Justin Truman said during the showcase. "Because Destiny 2 is not going anywhere, and neither are your expansions. We want this story, since we first communed with the Darkness on the Moon, to be fully playable from start to finish.
"We're happy to announce today that we are not planning to sunset any more expansions. We want the Destiny universe to grow, and we're going to continue to do everything that we can behind the scenes to keep that possible within our game engine."
The Content Vault isn't going away entirely: The showcase recap clarifies that "seasonal content will continue to stay throughout the current expansion year and then move to the Destiny Content Vault when a new Expansion launches." But the expansions themselves—the bits that keep players up to speed on everything that's happened so far—will remain available.
In practice that should mean that major destination spaces, such as The Moon and Savathûn's Throne World (which were added in Shadowfall and The Witchqueen, respectively), will be staying in perpetuity.
It's definitely good news for Destiny fans, but bear in mind that this only applies to current and future expansions: Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, The Witch Queen, Lightfall, and whatever comes next. There's no word on the possibility of permanent Vault removal for older expansions, like for instance Forsaken, the one where Cayde-6 gets put down for good—an important part of the overall Destiny 2 narrative by any measure. We'll have to wait and see how that works out.
