Another unexpected twist in the Bungle tale:

That's the latest move from Bungie, which recently un-cancelled Destiny 2 following a massive fan backlash over the decision to put the game in maintenance mode. It seems odd to me—I would think that now, with the seeming rebirth of Destiny 2 at hand, is exactly the time you'd want that storefront up and operational. Regardless of the need for a new storefront, taking the old one offline for months while it's being made feels counterproductive.

Also interesting is that the Marathon storefront, which lives on its own subdomain, is not being taken offline while the "new home" is being built. They look effectively identical, so I have no idea what to make of that.

Here's a little comparison of the two:

At a guess, I'd say the most likely outcome here is that the Bungie Store will be integrated into Sony's own storefront—rather like Bungie's own absorption into Sony after the wheels came off the whole "independent subsidiary" thing.

Some followers hope that will lead to lower shipping costs, which would be a positive outcome of sorts, although Sony taking control of the whole endeavor could mean a more limited selection of stuff going forward. That's entirely speculative, but that's also the whole Bungie/Destiny 2 situation in a nutshell: Something is happening, but exactly what we just cannot pin down at this point.

What we can pin down is that the Bungie Store as we know it will close on October 19, while digital downloads and emblem codes will remain accessible until December 31. Get 'em while you can.

In a surprise move, Bungie is bringing a bunch of stuff back to Destiny 2. All the campaigns, destinations and raids that were removed from the game back in 2020 will return at some unspecified point in the future.

It's a big attention grabbing move—one that's welcome, but that also acts as another frustrating reminder of how many unforced errors Bungie made across the length of Destiny 2's active, live-service run. For some, removing paid-for campaigns was the line in the sand—an unforgivable move that poisoned the well for how the wider gaming community viewed the game.

Right now, it's hard to say what any of this means for the future of Destiny. Rather than speculate, I'm going to focus on what bits of these returns I'm actually excited for. Not the campaigns—honestly they range from 'fine' to 'not very good'. No, I'm more interested in the small, hyper-specific parts of Destiny 2 that I've missed over the years—the little moments and memories that still live rent free in my head.

Here are seven such moments. Jump into the comments to let me know yours.

All other games writers are cowards. Wealth and power have conspired to intimidate them into silence, to concern themselves with trifles instead of things that actually matter. Not me, though. I'm brave, and strong; my voice won't be quieted. I don't care about the consequences that come for speaking the truth. Here is the article no other outlet dares write.

Here is how the main characters of Crime and Punishment would fare if they had to survive the plot of Halo 1.

Oh good, it looks like Marathon players might have to fight a Gundam: In its developer insight video explaining Marathon's upcoming pivot away from full-on extraction focus, Bungie offered a brief glance at an internal Miro board showing concepts for potential enemy additions. One of those concepts was labeled "UESC Mecha (BOSS)," a behemoth that looks like it's sporting its own Deep Striker-tier weapons arsenal. Best of luck, runners.

A few illustrative quotes from the "Future of Marathon Part 1" video that Bungie published today. The team (recently reduced by Sony layoffs) were candid in their plans to transform Marathon from purely an extraction shooter to something more Destiny-shaped: Easier onboarding, dedicated PvE options, a wider variety of PvP (Including a team deathmatch mode), and a greater emphasis on story. This upcoming vision for Marathon sounds less hardcore and, ideally, more broad in its appeal.

The two major milestones for Marathon's future will be the December Symbiosis update and a March 2027 update. Here's what Bungie's laid out for those:

Over the past couple of months, my Destiny 2 Fireteam has given me a tour of the Destiny 2 content I missed when I hopped off the train following the pandemic. When you play all the dungeons back-to-back, it's a buffet of delights—a concentrated dose of amazing and frequently obtuse FPS level design that you simply can't find anywhere else. A reminder that Bungie, pre-layoffs, was the very best at what it did.

And yet, no game has had more caveats in its lifespan. There was always an amazing experience inside Destiny 2 somewhere, but recommending it to any normal person was out of the question. The onboarding for rookies was rough. Hoovering up all the expansions and dungeons was pricey and confusing. And after the release of The Final Shape, Bungie pissed off its player base repeatedly until the game was no longer sustainable. At what point would you ever advise a new player to jump in?

Still, none of those issues compared to the content vault, first introduced in 2020. In removing entire campaigns from the game, not only did Bungie break players' ability to understand the complete story of Destiny 2, it also raised questions about the ethics of deleting content that you thought you'd paid for. It cast a shadow over the game for the rest of its lifespan.

Now, three months after its supposedly final update, Bungie's decision to unvault Destiny 2's oldest content may have been the only move left on the board to keep the studio going. While this is only really a first step to winning players back, it's a savvy decision that has reignited a sensible amount of hope in the game's community. It also means the developer isn't solely dependent on the dicey fortunes of Marathon to keep going.

When the content vaulting began, I sympathised with Bungie's effort to keep the Destiny 2 file size reasonable and the experience streamlined. The thought of having 200GB of storage dedicated to one game I'd never delete was not appealing.

But it quickly created many more problems for Bungie than it solved: if you wanted the complete Destiny 2 story, which was already pretty confusing to follow, tough luck. The original Red War campaign from 2017 has now been unavailable for well over half the game's lifespan, and the whole point of that experience was to give players a solid entry point to the wider universe of the game. If you came to Destiny after playing the highly scripted Call of Duty single-player campaigns, it made you feel at home.

Unfortunately, much of the content that defined the game's early years and cemented its appeal was gone by 2022, including its signature raids that showed Bungie's masterful level designers at their best. And that permanently broke trust in the studio.

Now Bungie has chosen the last possible moment to reverse course on this, which, along with the tone of the update posted on Bungie.net, is how you know the studio is not in a good place.

The smart tactic in Bungie's announcement is that it promises a mix of short-term changes (expanding the remit of what Marathon can offer players), mid-term changes (unvaulting Destiny 2 content, which doesn't sound like a small job) and long-term things to look forward to (all-new Destiny content in an unspecified form). That's a clever strategy because it all seems actionable on paper—it doesn't overpromise, which is vital for the studio to start rebuilding trust.

Drastic action

The Marathon piece of this feels slightly less optimistic. We know the next major update is now coming in December with a permanent PvE mode, and that the studio aims to turn the game into a "deeper survival experience" and shed its "genre constraints" as a hardcore PvP FPS.

The merits of Marathon are well-documented on this website, and it's still one of my favourite games of 2026. But even that game has been dogged by Bungie's perpetually strange decision-making in its short life, like divisively wiping progress each season or time-limiting the PvE experiences that might expand its appeal. That's the sort of flex that only makes sense when you have ten times the number of active players.

Pinning all of the studio's hopes on Marathon probably wasn't going to work.

All of this leaves you with the sense that Bungie had to do something drastic—that the unvaulting and revival of Destiny is an emergency maneuver to save the studio either from closure, or simply becoming a downsized incubator for game projects you won't get to play for 10 years (if ever).

Combined with the recent delays in seasonal content rolling out, Bungie is now in the strange position where one of its games is having an identity crisis while the other has unexpectedly come back from the dead.

FPS buffet

Still if you're able to divorce Destiny 2 from the drama of studio machinations and the live-service woes of its final years, there's an undeniably positive story in here. Unvaulting everything may leave us with the richest treasure trove of first-person shooter content in history, or at least since The Orange Box. That would be quite a turnaround, and well worth celebrating, especially with some kind of future for Destiny on the horizon. But will it be enough?

The big caveat with all of this, of course, is that Bungie has already laid off many of the staff who made those individual pieces of Destiny 2 special. To blindly accept that any future Destiny content could reach the same standard without those esteemed designers and artists would be giving the studio leadership too much credit. Based on the tone of the letter to the community, they surely know this.

Still, Bungie gets credit for finally reversing the biggest self-own in its history. And some of the stuff sitting in that vault is pure gold.

I spent some of my darkest pandemic days roaming the platforms of New Pacific Arcology on Titan while listening to podcasts—I can't quite believe I'm going back there. The wretched sparrow race in Scourge of the Past will soon be playable again, too (and I'll once again fail to reach the finish line). Maybe I'll even fight my beloved Callus again on Leviathan, if I can overcome near-the impossible odds of finding three additional friends who still play Destiny 2.

These were foundational Destiny 2 experiences for me and many other players. It will be grand to have them back.

Bungie's new leadership duo laid out the "next chapter of Bungie" today in a blog post with an accompanying video. The big news is that Bungie has essentially uncanceled Destiny 2, or will at least go the lengths to finally undo its greatest mistake: vaulting a bunch of raids and multiple of its story campaigns. Funnily enough, that work has already begun on the community side with a mod project that makes vaulted content playable through an offline build of Destiny.

I got off the Destiny train a long time ago, but its "downward spiral," as PCG's Lincoln Carpenter put it in May, was a series of unforced errors that really began with the widely-hated decision to "sunset" (delete) gigantic chunks of the game in the name of "dealing with bloat." I still remember when a friend told me that the Destiny 2 campaign, I thing I bought and enjoyed in 2017, was simply gone.

The news comes just three months after a brutal round of layoffs that affected hundreds of Bungie devs, essentially disbanding the Destiny 2 team. It's unclear if the studio will attempt to rehire the talent it shed with the shortsighted decision to call it quits on Destiny, but at least what's left of Bungie understands that it has lost whatever goodwill it had left, and will need to slowly rebuild trust.

On the Marathon side, Bungie reinforced that the extraction shooter is undergoing its own transformation with a permanent PvE mode and social space coming in December. To me, this also serves as a proof of life: Marathon isn't shutting down in the immediate future.

Have you heard the rumor that Bungie is looking to somehow merge Destiny and Marathon into a single series? I'll admit that I hadn't, until Marathon creative director Julia Nardin took to X to say flat-out that it's not true.

"As someone who's worked on both Destiny and Marathon, I can confirm that the 'leak' about us merging the two IPs is fake," Nardin wrote. "They share a lot of the same Bungie DNA, but like siblings they're also their own independent entities. Please don't believe everything you read online."

Nardin should know: Prior to taking up the creative director mantle on Marathon earlier this year, she worked on the narrative for multiple Destiny 2 expansions, and served as associate narrative director on the free-to-play mobile shooter Destiny: Rising. Nardin's message was also reposted by Bungie comms lead Dylan Gafner, better known to the community as dmg04.

The message appeared to be in response to a lengthy "leaks" post on 4chan, subsequently posted on the Marathon subreddit, which makes claims ranging from basic gameplay changes to a move to a free to play—and, of course, the merge: "There has been some vague testing the waters internally to rework Marathon and Destiny into a single IP with Marathon representing the beginning of Mankind's Golden Age and to foreshadow more threats to be used in a future Destiny project."

I suppose that would be workable—it's not too much of a chore to mash up disparate properties via the passage of time and weird shit happening in the background—but the obvious question is, why would Bungie bother? What's the payoff?

Lots of Destiny 2 fans are unhappy that their favorite game has reached its end, but I don't think they're suddenly going to come trucking to Marathon because of some meaningless narrative twist. And that's Bungie's real problem: Marathon numbers are sagging badly and efforts to turn that around haven't gone anywhere.

That's a concern with caveats because Marathon, unlike Destiny 2, isn't free to play, but Bungie's been going hard since the game's launch to find its footing: With the Destiny 2 team gone and no new projects imminent, Bungie needs Marathon to work. The studio recently delayed the game's planned September content update into December, preceded by a smaller seasonal refresh in October, and also abandoned its "strict seasonal schedule," as part of its plan to turn Marathon "into a more alien and dynamic survival experience."

Relentless optimists may note that Nardin didn't address any of the other leaks in her post: The free-to-play transition, for instance, or that K-pop crossover skins are happening. And who knows? Maybe some of the predictions it makes will come true. Personally, though, I think Nardin's final bit of advice is good: Don't believe everything you read on the internet. (And my own personal addendum: especially if it comes from 4chan.)

Bungie is changing how it updates Marathon going forward, saying it is "moving away from a strict seasonal schedule to give the team more flexibility to build, test, and improve features before release." As a result, the content planned to launch as part of this month's seasonal refresh has been delayed into December, and will be preceded by a small update in October "that resets progression and the in-game economy, refreshes rewards, and improves the live game."

The Nightfall refresh, launching on October 6, will give all Marathon players "a fresh starting point," something Bungie said was necessary after issues with the season "accelerated some players into the endgame while leaving others behind."

We’re making changes to Marathon’s update plans and how we deliver new content.We’re moving away from a strict seasonal schedule to give the team more flexibility to build, test, and improve features before release. (1/2)

— @marathonteam.bungie.net (@marathonteam.bungie.net.bsky.social) 2026-09-14T18:19:57.929Z

"This made Extraction more difficult to engage with and prevented the reset from working as intended," Bungie wrote. "October gives us an opportunity to apply what we learned and establish a healthier progression experience."

The October refresh will also see the Vault Breaker PvE mode brought back for a limited time, and there will be other "gameplay experiments" between the October refresh and Symbiosis update in December as well. That's the big one: PvE will finally be made a permanent mode, and there will be a new Runner shell, a "social space with a firing range," an experimental Team Deathmatch mode, and various other improvements.

"[Symbiosis] is only the beginning of what we’re working toward. As players spend time with these updates and share their feedback, we’ll continue refining and expanding Marathon," Bungie wrote.

"We’ll share more about that future through Dev Insights videos and regular development updates. Our first blog about Marathon’s future plans is scheduled for later this month where we will share how we will be evolving Marathon into a more alien and dynamic survival experience."

That sounds promising—I've said before and I'll probably say again that Marathon looks like a game that could really pull me in with a singleplayer mode that allows me to explore and play at my own pace—but some players aren't too happy about the considerably longer-than-expected wait for new content.

Memories of Destiny 2, which scrapped its own seasonal model in favor of "episodes" a few years ago—a move which did not save it—likely also loom large, particularly given that Marathon's concurrent player numbers on Steam continue to sag: A shakeup like this, especially for a game so relatively new, has a certain 'last ditch effort' vibe to it.

Still, there is some excitement about the prospect of a more well-rounded Marathon emerging from all of all, with a properly fleshed-out singleplayer mode and more social interactivity—which could, ironically, make Marathon much more Destiny-like. Bungie comms boss Dylan Gafner, aka dmg04, said on X that players can "expect more comms from the team over the next few weeks (and months)." We'll see how it goes.

In 2021, as studio CEO Pete Parsons cited the company's recent "tremendous growth and opportunity," Bungie announced its plans for a massive expansion to its Bellevue, Washington headquarters. The campus embiggening, which internal sources have reportedly described as costing "hundreds of millions" of dollars, more than doubled the size of Bungie's offices from 84,000 square feet to just under 211,000.

Now, after five and a half years of spending sprees, publisher acquisitions, stumbling product launches, project cancellations, and repeated mass layoffs, Bungie appears to be seeking subletters for the goliath game development headquarters it's no longer capable of filling.

According to a 10-page leasing brochure reviewed by The Game Post, Bungie is seeking interested renters to sublease its expansive headquarters, listing its 210,984 square feet as a "turn-key" production facility. In addition to expected office fixtures, the listing also features a dedicated lobby, gym and exercise facilities (including a rock climbing wall), a motion-capture studio, a cafe, catering space, and a private exterior patio.

While the brochure didn't directly identify the studio, a statement provided to press verified that Bungie was actively pursuing a sublease.

"Bungie is exploring options to sublease its campus in Bellevue, Washington. The studio transitioned to a digital-first model several years ago, and this move reflects the team's evolving workplace needs and the effectiveness of its remote collaboration," Bungie said. "Bungie will continue to maintain a physical office presence in Bellevue."

Bungie formally adopted remote work eligibility for most of its roles in 2022, following the studio's shift to work-from-home development during the COVID-19 lockdown years—effectively defeating the purpose of its office expansion due to circumstances that would have been impossible to predict during its early planning stages.

Bungie wasn't the only games company to make ill-fated investments during the height of the pandemic: Analysts have repeatedly cited overly-ambitious expansions and acquisitions—propelled by the COVID era's low interests rates and explosion of at-home entertainment revenue—as one of the driving forces behind the games industry's brutal cost-cutting in the years that followed.

Bungie's overextension, however, was particularly drastic. After Sony purchased the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022, Bungie leadership embarked on a rampant hiring spree, adding hundreds of developers to the payroll to fill out development teams for a swath of simultaneous incubation projects—projects that would prove unsustainable as the impact of Covid waned and revenues started to tumble across the industry.

A mass layoff followed in October 2023, affecting roughly 100 employees. The next round cut 220 developers in July 2024 as fallout from Bungie leadership having reportedly "overstated their studio’s financial prospects to Sony," leading to a dire enough fiscal outlook that even the success of Destiny 2's Final Shape expansion couldn't salvage it. As Sony intensified its oversight amidst the mounting turmoil, Bungie's leadership began to abandon ship, culminating with Pete Parsons departing the studio in 2025—presumably in one of his vintage collector cars.

Bungie staff ultimately suffered another sweeping layoff in June 2026, with most of the Destiny team losing their jobs in the aftermath of Destiny 2's end of live service. At peak employment, Bungie's staff numbered over 1,600; in July 2024, Parsons said the studio numbered around 850. The WARN notice issued for this June's layoff indicated at least 292 jobs were affected.

In other words, if all of Bungie's remaining employees gathered in its office, there would be fewer than 600 people to fill its 211,000 square feet.

If you're interested, the master lease runs through September 30, 2035.

I grew up in a golden age of FPS games. With the likes of Modern Warfare 2, F.E.A.R., Halo: Reach, and Black Ops 2 all releasing back when I had no responsibilities and all the time in the world; I didn't know how good I had it.

Looking back on it now, it's clear to see that we had it so good because, well, excellence breeds excellence. There was no shortage of inspiration for devs to pull on back in the 2000's and early 2010's.

In fact, Halo: Reach's designer Niles Sankey has confirmed this by dropping by to tell fans just how much other releases of the era inspired Reach. "Modern Warfare 1 and 2 were huge influences on Halo Reach's campaign," Sankey says in a social media post. "The tonal execution in those games was (and still is) absolutely brilliant."

That's not to say that Halo at the time had absolutely nothing going for it. "We knew that Halo did some things better (AI combat, vehicles, etc)," Sankey says. "But we also knew the MW games were beating us in other departments."

One area which the Modern Warfare games had Halo beat was in inter-character relationships and, crucially, its ability to tell a gritty and rather depressing story. "Many of the moments in Reach were inspired by the brilliant work of Infinity Ward," Sankey continues. "Including the Nobel team squad interactions, and 'Objective Survive' was spiritually inspired by the Nuke sequence (in Modern Warfare 2). We just tried to push it one step further."

Reach's final Lone Wolf mission and Current Objective: Survive still haunts me. At the time I'd only just gotten over Loose Ends, and now my poor naive young self was faced with another previously implausible situation. I'd never considered the possibility of the character I'd play in a game, someone who was so clearly meant to be the hero, not making it out alive. I was all too familiar with important characters I liked kicking the bucket, but Reach's final objective did, and still does, hit different.

As someone who writes guides for a living, I'm always hopping between different games, riding the ever-rolling wave of live service updates, DLC, and new releases that define our industry. I've dipped my toes into all sorts of MMOs over the years, but amidst the constant barrage of games, only one ended up sticking around for me, and that was Destiny 2.

I loved its gunplay, seasonal structure, and over the years I came to adore its dungeons and raids, sinking over 3,000 hours into grinding and playing with clan-mates. But then, it came to an end. It wasn't a particularly graceful end—it hadn't been in a good place for a while and it stopped midway through a narrative arc that was supposed to sustain the game for years.

At least stripped of its live service shackles, Destiny 2 retains its charm, and most of all, it is still playable. But there's a sense that, beyond the new content added in the final update, that's all she wrote.

So this week I'm asking: Have you ever said goodbye to an MMO you've played for a huge chunk of time? The commitment that this genre necessitates fosters a special kind of investment, both in material terms and in experiences raiding and dungeoneering with clan mates. It's well documented that people make lifelong friends (and often enemies) in MMOs and even meet marital partners—something that was definitely the case with Destiny.

How do you say farewell to a game that can mean so much? Maybe you've played MMOs so long that you've become inured to the idea of their end. Is it easy for you to find another MMO to take part in and start anew? Or is it never quite the same?

I'm partly asking out of curiosity, but also as someone who's invested a vast quantity of time in a single MMO that doesn't really have any truly comparable competitors. Maybe your favorite MMO ending can be a good thing? I certainly have a lot more time for other stuff now I'm not grinding power or gear I want.

For my part, at least, I'm planning to take a break and then check out Guild Wars 3 when it rolls around. We've got a fair few GW2 players on-site who rave about it, but the idea of being on the ground floor for a new MMO is a lot more appealing to me.

Still, a small part of me actually felt a sense of relief when Destiny 2 ended. Not all MMO partings are to do with the game ending, after all, but must also sometimes be about realising you can no longer justify the time you're sinking into them. Either way, share your thoughts and solidarity with MMO bereavement in the comments.

Just four months after the release of Marathon, game director Joe Ziegler has announced that he's leaving the game, and Bungie, effective today. His role will be filled by Del Chafe III, previously the assistant game director, who along with creative director Julia Nardin will "guide Marathon into the next chapter with an even better and brighter future."

"As for me, I'll be heading to something new, somewhere else, and will update you on where and what soon," Ziegler wrote on X. "I just want to say a deeply heartfelt thank you to all of you for supporting me and Marathon in our windy mission to bring a dark and terrifying space survival frontier to your screen.

"The mission will continue in new and surprising ways so stay tuned for what this team has in store for you! It's been a pleasure seeing all the stories you've created, all the clever ways you've found ways to murder robots and one another. Hopefully as I move onto new things, you'll join me for those adventures as well."

Ziegler's departure, coming so soon after Marathon's release and while it's still struggling to find its footing, is a shock. Bungie is rolling out big changes to Marathon, including an embrace of PvE gameplay in the upcoming Vault Breaker mode, which will debut—temporarily—next week and then roll out in full sometime in season 3.

It's the worst possible time for instability at the top, in other words, particularly given that a turnaround for Marathon is essential. It isn't a Concord-esque disaster, but Marathon's concurrent player counts on Steam are nowhere near what Destiny 2 was (or is even currently) putting up, even when it was in its deepest doldrums.

With the studio gutted and no other releases imminent, Marathon is an existential game for Bungie. Even just as a matter of public perception, losing Ziegler—a highly-regarded developer who only joined Bungie in 2022 and took the reins on Marathon just two years ago—is a major blow: The more it looks like you're in a spiral, the tougher it is to pull out of it.

Compounding Bungie's troubles, Ziegler isn't the only high-profile Bungie employee to leave in recent weeks: Former Marathon design lead Lars Bakken, a storied Bungie developer in his own right, left in June after more than 20 years at the studio and is now "retired from the videogame industry."

I was pretty excited when I read about Marathon's Vault Breaker PvE mode in June: I like shooting things, and I love the Marathon aesthetic, but the grind of extraction shooters just isn't my thing. In an update released today, ahead of next week's mid-season update, Bungie revealed more about the upcoming "experimental" PvE mode, including that its initial iteration will only be available for two weeks.

Vault Breaker will go live alongside the mid-season update on July 21, and will be playable until August 4. The full rollout is currently set to happen in Marathon season 3, which begins on September 22—although that won't necessarily be the date it goes live.

It's understandable that Bungie would want to go slow with Vault Breaker, at least to start. As "a roguelite PvE experience inside Cryo Archive," it makes significant changes to the Marathon formula: Players will access Vault Breaker with unique Sponsored Kits, and instead of extracting with the loot they've gathered, it will all be left behind. Instead, players will upgrade their equipment with a new kind of in-game currency collected during runs called Vault Data.

One new detail revealed in today's update is that there will be two tiers of Vault Data. Tier One Vault Data is found in vaults and must be exfilled in order to be collected, and will also be awarded for killing a UESC Commander regardless of whether or not you successfully extract; Tier Two Vault Data is only earned by successfully solving consecutive vaults on the same run, and then extracting. Bungie warned that "this will be especially tough for solo Runners," although you'll also be able to take the mode on in duos or trios, if you're into that sort of thing.

There will also be two tiers of Vault Data items offered on a weekly rotation, as well as a "daily deluxe weapon," Prestige weapons, and other items. However, while this equipment can be purchased with Vault Data, they're only for use in standard Marathon modes, and won't be available in Vault Breaker, which as mentioned is only accessible with Sponsored Kits.

"At the start, the kit is at its weakest, offering only one standard weapon along with a small amount of equipment and consumables," Bungie explained. "As you earn Vault Data, different upgrade paths will begin to open. You might want to focus on weapon quality. Others may want more survivability, or they may want to get started with a wider mix of implants and cores. The path is entirely up to you."

It's a long shot, but even so I hold out some small hope that Vault Breaker will be such an immediate success that Bungie decides to keep it around, rather than pulling it until season 3. PC Gamer Marathon man Rory Norris had similar thoughts about the new "PvP-lite" Sponsored Survival mode, an experimental queue that ran for a week in June: He said the mode is so good, "it should remain a permanent fixture and be expanded to the other maps once the test wraps up next week."

Bungie is in a tough spot right now. Destiny 2 is dead, the studio has been gutted, and the only bullet it has in the chamber is Marathon, which has not been a blockbuster success. I don't know how likely it is that the addition of a proper PvE mode will turn that around, but I'm eager to try it, and I hope that opening the door to players who want to engage with the setting but aren't big fans of extraction shooters proves a successful strategy.

Destiny 2 isn't going anywhere, but it also isn't… well, going anywhere. The game's servers will still be running for the foreseeable future, but Bungie has since ceased updates to its flagship shooter to move onto other projects, tragically laying off much of its staff in the aftermath of that decision.

It's a sorry state of affairs, and one that Warframe developers have lamented before, despite being in competition with the game from a ruthless, capitalistic sort of perspective. In actuality, there's a lot more camaraderie between developers, with live ops lead Megan Everett calling it "heartbreaking" back in June.

That sentiment has been repeated again by creative director Rebecca Ford in an interview with our friends over at GamesRadar+ during TennoCon: "It's horrible news, because it shows that even if you care so much, the business side of this industry always gets the last remark."

Ford says that even though the Destiny 2 team had their own successful IP and worked hard to keep it afloat, that kind of commitment just doesn't protect you from anything in the current industry:

"That's not the first time it's happened, and it'll happen again, where the business aspect of the videogame economy makes the decision for you, and it is existentially threatening at every level, because the idea that we aren't in charge of our own goodbye is something I wake up thinking about every single day."

It's something that's been grimly echoed throughout the industry, both during Microsoft's shock studio closures in 2024, which saw Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks unceremoniously closed, and in the bloodbath years that've ensued from all corners of the videogame industry.

A greater shame, too, because according to those of us on the PC Gamer team who've stuck with Destiny 2 for years, it's been left in one of its best states—though as we've seen with other games, you can be genuinely turning a corner and still get sucker-punched.

Destiny 2 is done: The final patch is out, Bungie is decimated, and the game will remain playable but the story of one of the biggest, best and most influential online shooters ever is over. To memorialize the moment, Bungie has rolled out one last gift for players: A new emblem, free for everyone, called Gloriabundus.

The emblem, shared on X (via Eurogamer), is a simple one, but elegant: The Destiny logo, and a distant city skyline, bathed in light. It's a small thing overall, but the restrained styling is, I think, appropriate for the moment.

Bungie communications lead Dylan Gafner, known to the community as dmg04, also reassured players that while the end has come, Destiny 2 won't be completely abandoned and left to rot. "There may be moments where we break glass for highest priority issues (game crashes)," Gafner wrote in a separate message.

"There will indeed still be downtimes for general server maintenance/upkeep. If we have the opportunity, a small fix could sneak in here or there."

Some Destiny 2 fans have held out hope that Sony will reverse course on the game's end, particularly given the resurgence in players on Steam that followed the end-of-development announcement. But that seems extremely unlikely: Bungie's been on thin ice with Sony for at least the last couple years, and in June it laid off "most of the Destiny team" at the studio.

Update: It turns out that the Gloriabundus emblem wasn't the final final farewell after all. In the noble spirit of "we gettin' fired anyway," the Destiny 2 Team followed up the next with a whole bunch more freebies. Gloriabundus indeed—get 'em all below.

Former Destiny 2 and Marathon director Christopher Barrett has settled his lawsuit against Sony and Bungie. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Barrett implied a favorable outcome, saying he's "very satisfied" with it.

Barrett had a long career at Bungie, where he spent nearly 25 years as a designer and director on the Halo and Destiny games. He also served as game director on Marathon before his unexpected departure in 2024; subsequent reports said he was fired following complaints of inappropriate behavior with women at the studio.

Barrett, however, alleged that the real reason for his dismissal was a desire to avoid paying him more than $45 million under the terms of his employment agreement, and to "shift blame for and deflect attention from their massive business failures." He sued Sony and Bungie for $200 million, alleging that they colluded in a "premeditated scheme to terminate Barrett, avoid paying him the tens of millions of dollars he was owed, and make him a scapegoat for Defendants' business failures and reputational issues."

It initially appeared that Sony was going to fight: Its reply to the lawsuit included multiple examples of written communications between Barrett and female subordinates, which it claimed "reveal his pattern of misconduct." They included alleged drunk calls, requests to play "sexually charged games of 'Truth or Dare'," and comments such as "You want to be worshipped, I think?" Barrett's lawyers, however, said Sony was misrepresenting the nature of the interactions by cherry-picking text messages and "alleged conversations."

Sony's reply included a detailed breakdown of what Barrett earned following Sony's acquisition of Bungie in January 2022, and what was left on his contract when he was terminated: He was paid $36,811,044 in 2022, and $1,883,057 in 2023; he was due to collect another $45,579,627 from 2024-2026, broken down into three payments of $941,529 each for unvested RSUs [restricted stock units] in May and November 2024 and May 2025, and three payments of $14,251,680 each for re-vested shares (including Premium Bonus) in July 2024, July 2025, and July 2026.

Those staggering sums came about as part of Sony's $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie in 2022, $1.2 billion of which went toward talent retention: Essentially, Sony had big plans for Bungie as a multi-game studio in those days, and wanted to ensure key employees like Barrett stuck around for the long haul. But those massive payouts started to look less well-considered following layoffs at the studio through 2023 and 2024, which put hundreds of people out of work. Meanwhile, higher-ups on these retention bonuses were essentially incentivized to stick around thanks to their 'golden handcuff' deals.

In a way, this settlement looks like something of a repeat: While numbers weren't revealed, Barrett seems very happy about it, and even if he 'only' got what he claimed he was owed on his contract, that's still $45 million in his pocket, just a couple weeks after Bungie laid off most of the Destiny development team and some Marathon devs as well.

In a joint statement shared by Barrett on LinkedIn, Sony and Bungie credited him for contributing to "some of Bungie's most successful games," and said they have added his name to the Marathon credits as the original game director.

In its latest videogame-themed, AI-generated meme, the official White House X account has published a Destiny 2 character sheet featuring an unrealistically ripped Donald Trump wielding a Gjallarhorn.

"Eyes up, Guardians," reads the official tweet. In the image itself, a muscular, Duke Nukem-esque Donald Trump wields the United States flag against a backdrop of fighter jets and a Rolls Royce. In a piece of blunt-edged state propaganda that would have Edward Bernays rolling in his grave, Trump bears a power level of 4700 (the max in actual Destiny 2 is 550, for what it's worth) and is equipped with a B2 Bomber companion, which costs "over $2 billion" per unit and was most recently deployed in America's attack on Iran.

The White House and its departments have been issuing videogame-themed, AI-generated propaganda for years now. Earlier today Homeland Security riffed on the cover art for The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to celebrate the US Coast Guard. Secretary Brooke Rollins riffed on GTA 6 in a recent video. The Department of Labor and The United States Customs and Border Protection have both taken a swing at GTA 6 as well. And those are just examples from the last seven days.

As Andy Chalk reported in March, the White House issued a spray of videogame-themed AI propaganda to promote its attack on Iran.

While none are subtle, or examples of great statesmanship, the White House's latest is especially poorly timed: today Washington-based Bungie announced sweeping layoffs. Sony executive Hermen Hulst said the layoffs would affect "a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members." With that context added, it looks very much like the president of the United States is mocking hundreds of now out-of-work developers.

That, or the White House's meme was devised before these layoffs were announced —Destiny 2 is experiencing a bittersweet renaissance at the moment—but that would only make it slightly less deranged. And it's hard to tell who this meme is meant to appeal to, save for the kind of person who pays Elon Musk at least $3 a month for a meaningless blue tick next to their name.

Whichever is true, It's just another example of the United States government's nightmarish slip into malevolent parody. Developers have responded to the disposal of "generational talent" with far more tact.

The other shoe has dropped. Following Destiny 2's last major update and widespread reports that Bungie was preparing for mass layoffs, Sony and the studio announced a "reduction in force" that includes most of the people who were working on Destiny 2, as well as several on the Marathon team and external contractors.

Exact numbers have not been given by Sony, but a required WARN notice issued by the studio says 292 positions were affected in Washington, where Bungie is headquartered (as spotted by GameFile's Stephen Totilo). That number does not include external or remote workers who were affected, so the real total is likely much higher. It's a bloodbath.

Despite Sony conveniently timing these layoffs on the same day GTA 6 pre-orders started, the gutting of one of the most storied and talented studios of the 21st century is all that people are talking about. Reactions across the hobby have included anger, sadness, and whatever you want to make of this official White House tweet. As is the way with this seemingly never-ending cycle of layoffs, we're also hearing from many of the employees affected by the layoffs, with many posts illustrating just how devastating this downsizing actually is.

Sandbox

Cinematics

The entire Cinematic org was included. Let me know if you're looking to pick up a Director and/or other talented cine folks at any level.

— @johnebenger.bsky.social (@johnebenger.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-06-25T22:50:58.907Z

Raid and dungeons

Engineering

VFX

Art

Quality Assurance

Community

On the Marathon team, developer Biru Jones, who contributed to the extraction shooter's powerful sound design, said they were let go.

Among the layoffs are longtime Bungie veterans like test lead Dawn Vu, who was about to celebrate 14 years working on Destiny.

"Generational talent just gone," wrote Bungie alum Ben Platnick. "These people were veterans from the Halo days."

In a statement issued today, CEO of Sony's Studio Business Group Herman Hulst said "most of the Destiny team" and "some Marathon team members" are gone, but noted that Bungie remains committed to supporting Marathon and future projects.

That rationale isn't going down smoothly with longtime fans, nor the folks who've been playing and covering Destiny for as long as it's existed.

I know Bungie is just the latest example of studio layoffs/closures shoveling skilled and hirable people into an industry that is catching them with a teaspoon, but it really is flabbergasting to see perhaps the best sci-fi audio/visual + gunplay artists In The World jettisoned by failed management.

— @woodwould.bsky.social (@woodwould.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-06-25T22:50:58.845Z

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Bungie has announced a "reduction in force" as it reorganizes following the end of development on Destiny 2, saying that with its premiere game now ended and new projects still in very early stages of development, "we unfortunately could not continue operating at our previous size."

"We know this decision has a profound impact on the people affected, their families, friends, and teammates," Bungie wrote in an unattributed message. "While these changes are necessary to best position the studio now and for the future, that does not lessen the difficulty of this moment or the impact it has on those affected."

Hermen Hulst, the CEO of Sony's Studio Business Group, released his own statement on the layoffs, indicating that the cuts run deep: Layoffs will impact "a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members."

"Over the past several months, together with Bungie leadership, we reviewed the studio’s long-term direction, development priorities, resource needs, and role within our broader portfolio strategy," Hulst wrote. "We explored multiple alternatives before concluding that a reduction was necessary to align the studio’s resources with its current priorities and long-term goals."

Hulst said "Marathon remains an important part of our portfolio," and said Sony will continue to support Bungie's "team as they build on the strong foundation established in Season 1 and 2, and as they work on incubation efforts for future projects."

Bungie's message actually begins by acknowledging that "Destiny 2 fell short of expectations these past several years," and that's undeniably true. The game has stumbled from one botch to another in recent years, angering and shedding fans, and leading our top Destiny men, Tim Clark and Phil Savage, to each express doubts about the game's future.

The irony is that, with Destiny 2 now concluded, it's putting up fantastic player numbers on Steam. Some of that is no doubt the result of people dropping in for a jolt of nostalgia or perhaps a final farewell, but it's also hard not to see it as evidence that there's a good game underneath all of Bungie's headless flailing, and that people want to play it.

Sony's decision to pull the plug on Destiny 2 instead of properly fixing it is baffling, particularly given its commitment—for now—to Marathon, which is currently pulling a small fraction of the Steam player counts that Destiny 2 is. Marathon is not free, which is no doubt a factor in that, but it's a live service game nonetheless. It's no doubt less expensive to operate than Destiny 2, with considerably less new content in each new season, but it still requires ongoing development resources that could have otherwise been directed elsewhere.

And while Hulst has committed to Bungie's future through Marathon and new projects, I can't help wondering if maybe this is the real beginning of the end. It's a situation that reminds me very much of BioWare, whose future feels very much in doubt even as it's ostensibly working on Mass Effect 4.

Bungie didn't say how many people were let go as a result of the layoffs, but said it will share more about its future plans later.

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Destiny 2 has reached the end of the line: The final update is live, TWIDs are over, and we're all left wondering how the one-time king of live service shooters has come to such ignominious ruin. Even Destiny's competitors are baffled by Sony's decision to pull the plug, although some say Sony's not the real villain here at all. If there is a villain, besides Bungie management—which I think we can all agree has been pretty consistently not great—one thing's for sure: It's not Destiny players.

That bit of reassurance came from Bungie communications lead Dylan Gafner, better known to players as dmg04, in response to a Destiny 2 streamer who wondered whether they'd "done enough to try and help the situation," and if there was somehow more they could do.

"'Could I do more?'" Gafner replied rhetorically (via GamesRadar). "You all have done more for this game and our studio than could ever be imagined, and no words can accurately depict how lucky we are to have shared these worlds with you.

"Don't blame yourselves or think you could have / should have done more. This is just the way it goes sometimes."

It's fair to say that Bungie has sometimes had a bit of a rocky relationship with some of the more rabid Destiny 2 player base. Bungie whiffed on Destiny 2 in many and various ways over the years—here's us explaining "why Destiny 2 players got so angry," in 2017—but the backlash from some in the community could be beyond the pale.

In 2022, Gafner wrote on Reddit that persistent abuse and threats against Bungie employees had resulted in "reduced communications as the team plans future protections/strategies to help avoid these sorts of things," which eventually led to the creation of the anonymized Destiny 2 Team social media account. In 2023, after winning a $500,000 legal action against a particularly abusive player, Bungie warned that Destiny 2 developers were still being harassed by members of the community simply because they worked at the studio.

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But, as with so many things in life, the worst of the noise came from a small number of players—the vast majority, while sometimes unhappy with one aspect of Destiny 2 or another, focused their frustrations through a lens of respect, appreciation, and love. Despite the rough patches, that's clearly what's settled in with Gafner.

"No matter the future, we will always have these memories," Gafner concluded. "Thank you. For everything."

I love the look of Marathon, and I like shooters in general. But extraction shooters? Not so much. I'm not very good at them, for one thing, and the constant pressure to get out with your loot before the timer hits zero is a huge drag. So when Bungie said it was looking at PvE modes for Marathon, you bet my ears perked up.

The experimental Sponsored Survival mode introduced earlier this month sounded potentially interesting but not quite what I was after. But the new, full-on PvE Vault Breaker mode revealed today? Yeah, that might be it.

Vault Breaker enables players to venture into Marathon's raid map, Cryo Archive, solo, in duos or trios, to take on a series of increasingly challenging vaults. The mode will have its own unique progression mechanic that enables players to increase in power across multiple matches, until they reach the final vault "and the mysterious entity within."

The new mode will require a special "Sponsored Kit"—one of Marathon's free loadouts—to access, presumably to maintain some semblance of gameplay balance. The bigger twist, though, is that Vault Breaker eschews one of the most fundamental aspects of extraction shooters: Any gear or items you find in the mode will be left behind when you leave. The only thing you'll take with you Vault Data, a new currency that can be used to upgrade your Vault Breaker Sponsored Kit, or to purchase gear that can be used in other modes.

Bungie said eliminating gear extraction will let players "experience Cryo Archive without flooding the economy with low-risk, high-power Cryo loot," which seems reasonable to me. But it's drawn something of a mixed reaction among the PC Gamer crew. Notorious Destiny freak Tim Clark called it a huge mistake, declaring that "not keeping the stuff you find is anathema to me," while FPS guy Morgan Park saw it in a very different light, saying it "sounds like a fun way to learn the map" without getting your ass shot off by people who already know it inside and out. Lincoln Carpenter, ever the voice of reason, said it "seems fine."

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For myself, I'm actually pretty excited. This is where I finally start paying Marathon: I have even less interest in the loot grind than I do in not having my ass shot off by people who already know the game inside and out, so a mode that effectively does away with both, but still affords me the opportunity to experience the setting and action, is exactly what I've been waiting for. But for players who've already learned Cryo Archive inside and out over the last three months, a warmup mode with no stakes or other players might be useful, but probably not what they're ultimately after.

Vault Breaker will be rolled out as part of Marathon's mid-season, which gets underway on July 21. The mid-season will also see the first iteration of the Cradle Evolution system, giving players who have maxed out their Cradle upgrades an opportunity to reset to zero in exchange for an additional maximum energy point and unique cosmetics, as well as "various other quality-of-life, tuning, and other changes, including the addition of player profile stats."

Destiny 2 is slowly closing its doors—its servers aren't shutting down, but Bungie has emphasised that it won't be getting any more content, bar a massive quality of life patch that has left it in a relatively good, but inert and unchanging state.

One might, if they were being cynical and cutthroat, think this is cause for celebration—particularly if they were in charge of the competition, as Warframe is. Not so, says community director and live ops lead Megan Everett in a conversation with Eurogamer.

"Truthfully, it's heartbreaking. It's earth-shattering. I never thought I'd ever see the day where I'd read an article from Bungie about Destiny 2 essentially shutting down.

"I'm speaking personally, but I know people would echo it as well. No one is celebrating the fact that this has happened to Destiny, and its players and that story. I know that people have obviously compared us in terms of being 'direct competitors' and stuff like that. But I think a game is healthy when you have competitors."

As someone in the MMO space, it's honestly true—World of Warcraft got its act together (at least, when compared to the catastrophe of Shadowlands) when a mass exodus of fans drifted to Final Fantasy 14. Conversely, with FF14's stagnation, it's starting to adopt a lot of the measures WoW and other MMOs did with Evercold, shaking things up.

My point being, healthy competition tends to drive games to be better than one another—and stop me if this is going off the reservation—but I think we can all broadly agree that we like it when videogames are good.

Everett also says it's a shame that Destiny 2's been shown support much too late: "I think what's unfortunate and sad is they announced this was happening, and suddenly people are showing all this support for them. They've been getting a lot of negativity for all this time, and it's like, where was all this love!

"Overall, I hate to see that happen to them. I have close friends who play Destiny over Warframe, and ain't mad about it. We have friends over there, to see this happen to them is devastating to the industry. No one saw Destiny going away"

Season 2 of Marathon kicked off earlier this month, and thus far it's been a season of ups and downs. Things started badly, with Bungie's traditional launch woes undermining its free-to-play week. But new features like the Night-time Dire Marsh map and its Sponsored Survival quickly proved hits popular with the community.

A few weeks in, however, new problems have emerged. Basically, progression in Marathon has become too easy, which is ironic considering the game's formidable reputation. Where you felt lucky to extract with anything of value in Season 1, Season 2 players have apparently been hoovering up so much loot that their vaults are overflowing with goodies, throwing the game's economy into disarray.

Earlier this week, Bungie published a Steam post explaining what had gone wrong, and what might be causing it. "Out of the gate in Season 2, progression and access to power moved much faster than the previous season," the developer wrote. "For reference, the average wealth in week two of Season 2 is similar to what we saw in weeks 11 and 12 of Season 1. And while we did want to increase progression speeds, we didn't land at a place that's healthy for the game."

Oops. As for what's causing this issue, the answer appears to be a combination of factors. For starters, there were several contributing bugs that Bungie says it's now fixed, such as "guaranteed gold drops in places that shouldn't have them". The rush of Sponsored Kits at the start of the season also gave progression a boost, as did a combined issue with "Sponsored Survival grind" and a valuable chest in the Complex Control area, with players milking Marathon's mostly PvE mode for all it was worth.

The primary factor remains somewhat elusive, however. According to Bungie, there's an issue making higher rarity loot proliferate through the game. But the team doesn't know exactly what's causing this. "This isn't something we've seen in our internal playtests, and we're still unravelling the source." Curious.

While it investigates this, Bungie has made some other "tweaks" targeting progression, such as turning off boosted containers and nerfs to Cradle XP rates. But these are temporary measures, which Bungie plans to "reverse later in the season when we have other solutions in place." Hopefully the team will figure out the root cause of the problem soon, though I'm sure there are some players who don't mind having a slightly easier time of it on Tau Ceti IV, at least in the short term.

Destiny 2's final content update threw so much into the shooter that something was bound to break, and break it did. An upcoming patch will fix a "near infinite damage" bug introduced by the Monument of Triumph update, but the developers at Bungie have decided to drag their feet on the fix to let more players have a taste of godlike power.

"While we're planning a fix (next week likely), we think this is a bit fun," the Destiny 2 team said on X. "Go ahead. Get out there, beat up on Atheon. Destroy some bosses. Do your thing."

The bug, which Rory describes how to exploit here, allows players to stack multiples of the same seasonal Artifact perks, achieving unreasonable damage output.

Bungie is disabling Artifacts in PvP modes for now so that players aren't falling victim to what the studio is calling "The Artifactening," but the game's bosses aren't so lucky.

"Do some crazy stuff," Bungie concluded. "Send us your videos. Have some fun. Be Brave."

The Monument of Triumph update brought back another way to cheese bosses, too: Punting them into the abyss.

The beloved technique is being deployed in The Pantheon, in which players fight a series of raid bosses back-to-back. As our friends at GamesRadar spotted, player Esoterickk has demonstrated how to send The Pantheon's version of Morgeth sailing over the edge of the arena for an uncontested victory.

"It wouldn't be a Destiny release if you couldn't bump a boss off a ledge," Bungie comms manager dmg04 said on X.

Destiny 2's sun is setting, and it's perhaps fitting that one of the oldest traditions of the franchise—that is, pushing bosses to their doom—is happening once again. Except this time, they're becoming porcupines holding void light footballs which smacks bosses so hard they fall to their deaths.

The method, as explained here by YouTuber InSaNeGaMeR300, involves combining a crossbow with high Persistence (to make the bolts stick for longer) and the Sentinel Titan's Ward of Dawn ability.

See, Ward of Dawn creates a protective dome of void light which you can pick up and reposition—turns out, when you do that, any crossbow bolts you've stuck into the central orb will travel with you while you carry it under your arm like a football. Hit an enemy with the Ward of Dawn while you're all porcupine'd up, and they'll go flying.

The game just assumes you beat the bosses in question fair and square, which means players have been using it to farm the Pantheon raid gauntlet, which returned in Destiny 2's final update.

It's something of a full-circle moment, as back in the Destiny 1 days, players would push the Vault of Glass boss, Templar, into the void with pulse grenades.

I'm not sure Bungie'll simply let this stand even if D2 is in its end-of-life era—or perhaps specifically because it's in its end-of-life era. Simply allowing players to yeet some of the game's hardest bosses for fat loot is funny, but also probably not what the developer envisions as the sunset of its game. Even if it is appropriate.

Until then, Sentinels can enjoy their free boss kills and potential god rolls—and, as one of our very own Destiny 2 players Sean Martin calls it, one of Destiny 2's paradoxically best updates yet, full of long-requested quality of life features. And deadly porcupine sportsballs, as it turns out.

When Bungie announced the final update for Destiny 2, I felt relieved. It surprised me as well. As someone who's spent the past six years (and over 3,000 hours) battling humanity's enemies across the solar system, you'd think that news of my favorite MMO's end would fill me with sadness. But no, just a bittersweet sense of relief as I considered we were finally moving on (as we should've after The Final Shape's year) to whatever the future may hold.

Whether Destiny 3 gets made or not, I genuinely think this is the best thing that could've happened. For fans of the series, it gives us time to reassess our relationship with the games and remember what made them special in the first place, something that definitely felt impossible for me while I was still strapped into endless Portal power climb and the ever grinding gears of the live service machine.

And this is what makes Destiny 2's final update, ironically, a good place to start. It adds numerous quality of life features we've been requesting for years, loot refreshes, exotic reworks, and even attempts to revitalise stale old destinations with the new Distortions activity. The narrative conclusion might be lackluster, but 71 pages of patch notes stand testament to just how much this final update has added to the game.

It's a patch about revitalising and reliving what it was, versus what it became in its final year or so.

What exactly does the new update bring, then? 17,000 words of changes detail the exact tweaks being made, but to summarize briefly:

• Sparrow Racing returns from Destiny 1
• A new Pantheon raid boss gauntlet brings back vaulted bosses
• Restored destination director and simplified Portal
• Lots of new guns, perk, and loot refreshes
• The ability to upgrade gear tier for weapons (making the tier system mostly redundant, thank god)
• Catalysts for all exotic weapons that didn't have them
• Reworked anti-champion mods so they're linked to weapon frames and the ability to choose between seven artifacts (seasonal buff sets)
• New aspects, grenades, and abilities
• More attunement options so you can target farm easily
• 300 more vault space slots and eight more loadout slots

Even Gambit got some love. As Destiny players do, our clan has had numerous QoL complaints over the years, one of the foremost being the inability to link seasonal artifact perks to loadouts—but Bungie even tweaked that. It's such a strange situation to suddenly have all of these amazing quality of life additions only for it to coincide with the end.

Couldn't it have been this way all along? *sigh* well, at least if you're starting now you can benefit from all of these lovely inclusions. And to clarify, Destiny 2 is still a very good game. I think the reason why anyone on the outside noticed players frequently getting so frustrated with it during its lifespan is frankly (despite Bungie's bungling) because there's no other game quite like it—sure, you can go play something else, but there are few other places you can go for a true Destiny-like experience.

Even though I fell off shortly after the release of Renegades and Edge of Fate's dire Portal grind, I wouldn't trade my 3,000 hours in Destiny 2 for any other game. When it's good, it's really good, especially its raids, dungeons, and high-level activities. There's a reason I've gilded the Conqueror title seven times, because in pure PvE buildcrafting and gameplay terms, Destiny 2 is still at the top of its game.

Obviously, there's an elephant in the room, though—what about the Red War? What about the original Destiny 2 campaign that sets the narrative foundation for every expansion after? I would've liked to replay the campaigns, and it would've gone a long way to repairing relations with players who are still smarting about that content vaulting years after the fact.

Sadly, though, Bungie wasn't able to bring it back out of the vault for whatever reason, presumably because it would fundamentally break the newer version of the game, which I think Destiny players are well aware is held together by string and duct tape. It did, however, finally create a collection bundle where you can grab all of the available expansions in a straightforward way. It's massively discounted right now, and I assume will be for a while yet.

The final update announcement actually made me more excited to play the game than I have been in a long time—finally, I thought, I can enjoy Destiny separate from the live service structure that came to dominate it, sometimes to its detriment. No more escalating power gains or pointless grinds, and all with the backdrop of the current QoL changes like tons of loadout slots so I don't have to think about Guardian Rank, and wide-ranging attunement so I can farm more easily for what I want.

It's like Bungie has unlocked Destiny 2 with this update, and it'll be the most liberating iteration of the game's new player experience ever. And for those of us who've done almost everything, there are new exotics to grab, new builds to make, and time still to tackle those challenges you've always pondered, like ticking off solo dungeons or trying the Pantheon.

Destiny 2 is ending—for all intents and purposes, in fact, it already has, with the launch earlier this week of its final update, Monument of Triumph. More than one Destiny fan at PC Gamer has described the moment as bittersweet—it's not only Destiny 2's last live service update, it's also one of its best—and in a smaller way, this is too: Maybe it's no surprise, but the clockwork-like This Week in Destiny updates will soon be over.

The launch of the Monument of Triumph update went remarkably smoothly, given both its massive scale and Bungie's long history of, well, not always having great luck with big updates. In today's TWID, the Destiny 2 team said it's "keeping a close eye on what needs some extra tweaks," and that an "incremental patch" aimed at tackling those issues is slated to go live next Tuesday.

And then, the sadness. "As a reminder from our Monument of Triumph announcement article, we will be continuing TWIDs for a few weeks following launch to keep you informed of game news," the team wrote. "Once we're through our launch window, our weekly blog entries will be entering a form of hibernation as well.

"This won't be the end of communications from us by any means; we'll still be keeping in touch with you and sharing community highlights through our website, social media channels, Discord, and other outlets."

It's kind of a melancholy moment even for me. I haven't touched Destiny 2 for years and even when I was playing regularly, I didn't care enough to keep up with TWIDs—known at the time as This Week at Bungie updates. I was happy enough to just jump around and shoot things and occasionally annoy my teammates by firing my super at the wrong time.

But my boss, editorial director Tim Clark, is a man who once ignored multiple tornado warnings so he could finish a Destiny 2 raid, and you better believe that every Thursday he'd have a quick scan through the TWAB and then I'd get a message in the PC Gamer Slack chat asking if I was covering TWAB, telling me what to cover in TWAB, and reminding me that if I enjoyed my ongoing employment I'd best keep the sass to a minimum—occasionally, all in a single sentence.

I did not keep the sass to a minimum, for the record, and while I haven't touched a TWAB (or a TWID) in ages, I have fond memories of working with Tim on them. Which isn't to say that I'll miss doing that, strictly speaking—trying to parse some of that stuff could be a genuine headache—but on this point at least, I will join with my colleagues in saying that, yeah, it's a bittersweet moment.

The new Distortions quest in Destiny 2 introduces you to the event of the same name, which Bungie hopes will revitalise destination-based play a little more now that the game has received its final update. There is a range of really good new weapons available in this event, so it's well worth the time if you find something you want to farm, especially with the inclusion of attunement for pretty much all activities.

You first get this quest from Lodi in the Tower, so here's what you need to do from then onwards to complete it, and how to play a Distortions event.

How to complete the Distortions quest in Destiny 2

After you visit Ikora and Lodi in the Tower, you'll get the Distortions quest. Lodi tells you that The Nine are still wreaking havoc on reality in a bid to escape the solar system, though none of that really matters now, but this is the intro to the new Distortions event.

Your first step is to head to whatever destination is currently Distorted—you can tell this by the red circle around it. Once there:

1. Complete a public event and then wait around after it—you'll see a red glowing pillar begin to build and a new event countdown will start.
2. Complete the Distortion event (both succeeding or failing counts). It's basically a wave defense, but between killing enemies, you have to destroy three glowing red corruptions hidden around the arena by shooting them.
3. Now you need to gather Strange Matter. You can do this by opening chests, gathering destination material nodes, and completing public events, so explore the destination grabbing what you can until you hit the amount.

When done, the Strange Matter will transform into a Strange Signal you now have to follow.

How to follow the Strange Signal in Destiny 2

Your final step is following a Strange Signal. This marker will appear on the map as a circle, so select it to activate the nav marker on it and follow the markers to get there. You'll find a tough Distorted enemy at the location you need to beat—doing so will unlock a chest just next to them that you can open to get one of the event weapons, usually of a high tier.

If you head into your inventory, select attunement, and then Distortions attunement, you can see all of the potential weapons that will drop. They each have the extremely fun Carrion Munitions origin trait, which spawns explosive insectoid robots that chase enemies when you defeat a powerful combatant.

You can find info about each of these weapons' perk pools either in their respective entry in collections, or by using light.gg. This will help you decide which to attune to when completing Distortions and Strange Signals.

It's the day of Destiny 2's final live service update, and players have swarmed into the shooter to celebrate the game and make their demands for Destiny 3 known.

With a peak of over 164,000 Steam concurrents so far today (via SteamDB), Destiny 2 is more active right now than it has been since Episode: Echoes launched in June 2024.

The biggest peak between then and now came with the launch of the Edge of Fate expansion in July 2025, which reached 108,000 Steam concurrents. That number quickly dissipated, and in April of this year, the shooter didn't break 13,000.

While not as bad as the news that Destiny 2 content updates are over, The Edge of Fate was a real low point for the game. One of our resident Destiny 2 diehards, Phil Savage, wrote in his 54% Edge of Fate review that Destiny 2 had become "worse to play in almost every way."

We didn't know at the time that the expansion was the beginning of the end, but we did wonder. "I have never known a Destiny 2 expansion with as many problems as Edge of Fate, and I'm worried the game may not survive them," Tim Clark wrote.

Ironically, the news of Destiny 2's demise has injected the scene with new energy. Bungie clearly threw everything it could at today's final update, which is called Monument of Triumph and came with an appropriately monumental list of patch notes.

And just as it takes its final live service breath before entering maintenance mode, Destiny 2 has become today's top seller on Steam thanks to the whole game going on sale for $26/£22. Kind of makes you wonder if they should say "psych!" and announce another expansion, doesn't it?

Plenty of fans would certainly like more Destiny. A petition asking Sony and Bungie to greenlight Destiny 3 has gathered over 370,000 signatures.

The end of Destiny 2 development came as a surprise to everyone: players, streamers, casual observers, and even the development team at Bungie, most of whom reportedly had no idea it was happening until it happened. It was such an outrageous move that even Rebb Ford, the creative director of Warframe—the other Destiny—called it "unthinkable."

"That news was just cataclysmic," Ford said in a recent episode of the OnlyFrame podcast (via GameSpot). "There is no world where it makes sense, from someone who enjoys videogames, that you can just do that. You can just end one of the biggest things to hit the gaming industry in the past 10 years.

"But it turns out that this is very much what happens when the business side of things, which Cohh [Carnage] and I have emphasized with gusto how much we hate when that becomes the biggest voice in the room—and you've seen the business side of things be the biggest voice in the room for a long time. It's just never hurt this much for a lot of people in our niche genre. It's unthinkable."

For those not in the loop, this is notable because Warframe is probably Destiny 2's best-known competitor. It generally isn't considered quite as refined as Destiny 2, nor has it hit the same concurrent player highs on Steam, but it's also been around a lot longer and in many ways is a more freewheeling kind of experience—which is a nice way of saying it's viscerally weird. Destiny 2 obsesses over the most minute gun stats; Warframe gets Werner Herzog to talk about being "cursed to walk through this senseless universe in living metal, haunted by dreams."

And while Warframe has certainly had its own share of issues over the years, it's maintained a fairly steady (and sizable) audience throughout. And even though Warframe predates Destiny, it owes a lot to Bungie's wider work: Ford said in May, shortly after Destiny 2's ending was announced, that "there is no Warframe without the legacy of Bungie games."

Ford also reminded podcast viewers that at one point prior to the Bungie purchase, Sony was actually looking to buy out Leyou, the Chinese parent company of Warframe developer Digital Extremes.

"I'll leave it at that," Ford said after reading a headline from a report at the time. "Warframe is made by Digital Extremes and Sony wanted to buy Digital Extremes, according to a 2020 article. So there was a time, is all."

"Y'all might have dodged a timeline bullet," Carnage says in response, to which Ford replies simply, "Yup."

Leyou, for the record, was acquired by Tencent in December 2020, just a year ahead of Sony's Bungie buyout and at less than half the cost: Sony spent $3.6 billion on Bungie, Tencent dropped $1.5 billion on Leyou.

Warframe's annual TennoCon convention, which has now been going for a decade, returns this July in London, Ontario.

I've already sunk a good few hours into Marathon's Season 2 update after the unfortunately disastrous server issues plaguing its launch subsided. And it's everything I could have hoped for. The new nighttime Dire Marsh is ridiculously cool, turning down the lights on the swamp so much that you can barely see five feet ahead of you without a torch or the handy new gadgets. Monsters and ghosts lurk in the shadows, and the toxic plants now whisper for some reason. It's all very spooky.

While I expected the new map, Sentinel character, and the new guns to be the main event (and they are great), I'm shocked that the most fun I've had so far has been the experimental Sponsored Survival mode. Reflecting on the three months since launch, Bungie has stated that it's exploring more "PVP, PVE, and PVP-lite experiences", and Sponsored Survival is the first step in this process—the proper PvE test comes later in Season 2. Like previous experimental queues, Sponsored Survival is only here for a limited time. Just a week, in fact, running from June 2 to June 9, which also coincides with the free play period, too. If you're on the fence, now's a good time to check the game out.

In this mode, only one team of players will initially infiltrate Night Marsh. You'll have plenty of time to explore the map and complete events with only the UESC bots to worry about. I would say it's more laidback, but the UESC are no joke and the atmosphere is terrifying.

That said, it's a great opportunity to run through some events that you've perhaps not played before, and get a feel for where the better loot is without worrying about making too much noise.

However, after a while alone in the dark, solo Rook players will begin to backfill into the match. Since crews are restricted to Sponsored Kits at the start of each match, and Rooks are naked, it's low-stakes. But they'll be after loot, and with you having a head start, chances are they'll be gunning for you. Plus, there's only one exit.

In my experience so far, I've only run into a handful of Rooks as we've raced to the final extract, and it's not always been a violent interaction.

As a result, it's basically a PvE mode but retaining the tension that comes with PvP. After the visceral reaction to Marathon being a PvP-focused extraction shooter, this experimental mode accommodates the PvE playstyle many have asked for without sacrificing anything that makes it unique in the first place. In fact, I think it should remain a permanent fixture and be expanded to the other maps once the test wraps up next week. I'll miss it when it's gone.

Still, I'm curious how Marathon's full PvE mode, coming towards the end of Season 2, will pan out. With nighttime Dire Marsh, Outpost, and Cryo Archive, Bungie has demonstrated that it's capable of creating some excellent PvE activities within the confines of a PvP game. What will that be like without the threat of other players whatsoever? Better? Boring? I'm more than willing to go along with the scientific tests all the same.

After the unfortunate end to Destiny 2's live service support, all of Bungie's eggs are in a Marathon-shaped basket. The studio's immediate future hinges on the extraction shooter, so this makes Marathon's second season, Nightfall, all the more crucial. It launched yesterday and coincides with a free-play week for those on the fence.

Season 2 is all a Marathon fan like me could ask for, really:

• The Night Dire Marsh variant, which comes with new equipment like torches and sonar pulses, as well as terrifying Anomaly creatures, and UESC Certification activities.
• Sponsored Survival, a PvP-lite mode that pits a single group of players against the UESC forces and, later in the match, some Rooks.
• A new Runner shell, Sentinel, which is great for defending areas with tripmines and an anti-explosive barrier.
• Two guns, the KKV-9SD SMG and the D54 burst pistol, make the loot pool (especially at the lower ends) much more interesting. There are also major changes and additions to weapon and Runner mods.
• The Cradle system, which lets you fine-tune your build with stat upgrades and perks without relying so much on loot.
• A seasonal wipe and a barrage of overhauls to the contracts, UI and other.

Many of these additions are a direct response to the feedback so far, and some are things we didn't know we wanted. And so far, I've found it to be a really wonderful update.

Night Dire Marsh is effectively a horror game, plunging the swamp into darkness and forcing you to use torches and other gadgets to see. And Bungie's knack for environmental design shines once again, with toxic plants now whispering in your ears, ghosts that can stalk you, and the Anomaly shimmering in the centre of the map. It's beautiful, it's terrifying, and it's very fun. Despite it being effectively a night mode of an existing map, the new mechanics, activities, and overall playstyle you need to adopt make it almost unrecognisable.

Likewise, Sponsored Survival is basically an experimental PvE mode. You'll spend most of the match looting and shooting the UESC, but as the game progresses, rogue Rook players will spawn. In the rounds that I've played, it's predominantly been a solely PvE affair but with the near-constant fear that you could be ambushed.

The elephant in the room is that you basically couldn't play any of this for the first 24 hours, which is a big deal when Bungie's hosting a free-play week to get much-needed fresh eyes on Marathon. And it did, with the game reaching 30,000 concurrent players on Steam alone before the servers had to be switched off entirely. In what can only be described as a miracle, it actually climbed to a 40,000 player peak right after the servers came back online hours later.

Nevertheless, rampant Anteater, Monkey, or Weasel errors made for a terrible first impression—though as a Destiny player the instability did feel a bit nostalgic. Those issues have largely been fixed by now, at least.

Here's hoping that if and when Bungie decide to run another free-play session, it's prepared to have more players diving in, or it risks souring the waters further against it. After the loss of its main live service game, Bungie really doesn't need to hand out any more hits on a golden plate.

It's been a relatively quiet year for new game releases, but even by 2026 standards, June feels extra slow. That applies to everything really—both big-budget releases and indie games—but that doesn't mean the month is a total wash.

You'll just have to break out a few old reliables with new updates. I know I'll stay busy trying out Dead by Daylight's new killer, Jason, and the new Final Fantasy 14 patch. As someone who also spends too much time in an online game, I feel for folks grieving for the Destiny community, and I'm watching to see how, or if, that carries over into Marathon.

June is also time for the industry's annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles for Summer Game Fest, where we'll hold the traditional 'cram as many announcements as humanly possible into one weekend' ceremony. It's also the time of year where I spend the most hours poring over our annual new game release date calendar. So, if you happen to need me anytime within the next week or so, you now know where to find me.

The games we're watching in June 2026

June gaming events and sales

It's a busy month with Summer Game Fest, the PC Gaming Show, and more

As is the ancient E3 tradition, June is a big deal for new game reveals and announcements. You can check out our full Summer Game Fest 2026 schedule for more on where to watch streams, specific times, and predictions, but I'll hit the SGF highlights with other happenings in June.

• The Sony State of Play returns for an hour-long showcase on June 2
• Summer Game Fest officially kicks off its weekend of game announcements on June 5
• Wholesome Direct hosts another showcase for comforting, cozy games on June 6
• The Future Games Show airs its second 2026 showcase on June 6
• The Xbox Games Showcase and Gears of War direct air on June 7
• Our very own PC Gaming Show returns with host Frankie Ward on June 7
• The Dead by Daylight 10th Anniversary Party kicks off in Montreal on June 14
• Unreal Fest 2026 hosts its weekend conference in Chicago on June 16
• EVO 2026 holds its next Las Vegas brawl on June 26
• And more Steam sales continue with themed weeks, plus another Next Fest:
  • June 8 – 15: Bullet Fest
  • June 15 – 22: Steam Next Fest: June Edition
  • June 25 – July 9: Steam Summer Sale

Early access games and 1.0 launches in June 2026

Major game updates and events in June

More games releasing in June 2026

Upcoming June 2026 games

Next week, Destiny 2 comes to an end. The Monument of Triumph update, releasing on June 9, marks the final release for Bungie's nine-year-old live-service behemoth. I have to admit that, when I first heard the news, I was almost relieved—over the last year I've watched the game's baffling new direction alienate almost every person I regularly played with. Thanks to the disastrous introduction of the Portal and the unravelling of the many player concessions made under the Joe Blackburn era, Destiny simply felt less fun to play.

And yet, there's one final, bitter irony now that the end is in sight: The Monument of Triumph update looks like the best Destiny 2 patch we've had in years.

It is genuinely absurd the number of quality-of-life updates being stuffed into this final patch. While I'd expected an effort to leave the game in a better place for its final, forever state, I'm finding that with every new preview, I'm awaiting next week's release with more and more excitement. Here's just some of the major changes dropping:

• A much more simplified version of the Portal that takes away all of the need to faff around with mods
• A major buff to all primary weapons
• An extra 300 vault slots
• And extra eight loadout slots
• The ability to save your artifact mods directly to your loadouts
• Seven goddamn artifacts to choose between
• Intrinsic anti-champion functionality added to all weapons
• Just an absurdly big update to loot pools throughout the game

And those are just the things that made me actively say "oh shit, that's great". Let me be clear here: Bungie has cooked. The fact that I had to manually adjust my selection of artifact mods every time I changed loadout has been a small but consistent annoyance for years. It's so obviously inconvenient that I'd just assumed that, for whatever reason, Bungie couldn't fix it. And now, here, at the end, it's just solved.

All of which leads to perhaps an obvious question: Why the hell did players need to wait until now—effectively the death of the game—to get this stuff? Entire books could be written about what went on behind the scenes at Bungie across Destiny 2's development. About the studio's history of poor decisions that would irrevocably harm the game. Maybe the constant, grinding need for new content prevented Bungie from prioritising tweaks that would improve the basic day-to-day experience of play.

Whatever the truth, at least the game looks to end on something of a high note. I may be frustrated that the game had to die to get some meaningful improvements, but at least next week's final release offers up a compelling reason to return to the game.

"Guy who leaves negative Steam review after ungodly hour count" is truly one of the strongest soldiers in modern gaming. They scare me. It's a practice that speaks of obsession, but also a level of expertise and familiarity you just can't fake: What do you say to someone who knows your game that well, and hates it? Anyway, I'm in awe of ArkaneArdvark78, who left a negative Steam review of Destiny 2 after 10,098.5 hours, then kept playing for another 157.8 hours.

I think the craziest part of this is that ArkaneArdvark78's review is extremely reasonable⁠—shout out to Scott Smith, who's 8,000 hour negative review of Battlezone 98 ultimately won over PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens. ArcaneArdvark78 echoes sentiments I certainly felt during my piddly 700 pandemic-only hours of Destiny 2, as well as what I've heard from the community and PCG's own five figure lifers like brand director Tim Clark and UK editor-in-chief Phil Savage. I've reproduced ArkaneArdvark78's review here in screenshot and text form:

"First of all let me say this, I have been a loyal Destiny fan since it launched over 10 years ago. But that has changed with this new expansion. I have well over 10,000 hours between console and PC. With the Edge of Fate and the new gear tiers, character leveling and weapon tiers I have lost all interest in the game. What better way to offend your player base than telling them that all the armor and weapons that they have spent countless hours grinding towards is now useless.

"Unless you pour every waking moment you have to get the tier 5 gear you aren't maximizing your builds anymore. The Portal and the level grind of spending countless mind numbing hours grinding the same activity over and over and over to try to level up is a morale killer for the game.

"Bungie is so far removed from actually listening or understanding the player base it should be a major red flag. I can't even express the amount of disgust I have for this game after Edge of Fate released. I am done with this game. I don't think Bungie can bring it back to the point where I was excited to log in and run missions. Congratulations Bungie, you have lost another one."

Certainly heated, but not at all unfair or unnecessarily cruel, like you see in a lot of Steam reviews, regardless of hour count. There seems to be unanimous agreement that the Portal overhaul was a disaster. Even back in the relative golden age of The Witch Queen expansion, when I contemplated getting back into things, the thought of grinding pinnacle activities over and over to do actual fun stuff like raids and dungeons made me feel queasy.

ArkaneArdvark78 left this review last September, and time has only vindicated it further: Destiny 2 is being sunset, Destiny 3 is apparently MIA, and it's unclear if Marathon is big enough to sustain Bungie as it currently stands. They lost ArkaneArdvark78, and they lost the war.

As for ArkaneArdvark78's 157.8 hours post-scathing review, well, we've all been there I guess. Your friends ask you to hop on for some Nightfalls and one thing leads to another. That speaks to one of many small tragedies in Destiny 2's end of life: The many friendships it facilitated needing to find new outlets.

And hey, I can hardly judge: I still play Elden Ring Nightreign almost every day with PCG senior guides writer Sean Martin and contributor Tyler Colp. At least once a Depth 4 run, I say something along the lines of "I hate this game," "I hate all games," or "I'm glad we didn't put this on our 2025 game of the year list." I've only logged 382 hours, but I'm getting there.

Bungie revealed Season 2 of Marathon earlier this week, and it's already given players the headlines for its upcoming reset. Marathon is getting a new map, a new defence-focussed shell, a new runner upgrade system, and a free week for players who didn't jump aboard for Season 1 to try the game out for themselves.

Now, though Bungie has provided a much more detailed overview of how the new season will affect combat on Tau Ceti IV, diving into the nitty gritty of how gunfights have been reshaped and rebalanced for the coming wipe.

The changes are many and nuanced. But the upshot is that Bungie wants "your choices to feel more intentional" when you dive into a round. The rework gives players more options in both preparing for and engaging in combat, while also aiming to curb some loadouts that were too effective in Season 1.

In particular, there are two weapon-types that Bungie is aiming to tackle. Shotguns and specifically thermal snipers. The former, particularly the WSTR were the bane of balancing in Season 1, with Marathon's double-barrelled blaster having already received two separate nerfs. Season 2 doesn't make any further changes to shotguns. But it does introduce a new counter to players who enjoy close-range combat—the KKV-9SD.

This pistol-frame SMG was revealed earlier this week, with Bungie describing it as "excellent at mowing down anything immediately right in front of you." But Bungie specifically calls out its effectiveness against shotgunners in its combat deep-dive, stating that the KKV's rapid fire rate (the fastest in the game, apparently) "excels at close range combat, specifically mowing down eager shotgun rushers."

You can still use shotguns, of course, though that's more than can be said for thermal scopes on sniper rifles. Bungie believes thermal snipers were "overperforming" in Season 1, deciding to remove the optics' compatibility with sniper rifles in Season 2. This isn't necessarily a "permanent benching" and Bungie's going to investigate an alternate solution for this particular combination. But for the immediate future, you'll have to rely on standard scopes to take other players down from afar.

Alongside these counters and nerfs, a few guns are getting a buff for Season 2. The trusty Overrun AR will become even trustier come June 2, with a significant reduction in horizontal recoil and a smaller reduction in vertical kickback. Meanwhile, the CE Tactical Sidearm (aka the Halo pistol) is getting a substantial stat boost, as Bungie felt its performance wasn't hitting the mark. Hence, it's getting better aim assist, increased projectile magnetism, reduced ADS accuracy error multiplier, and a bunch of other adjustments.

Other combat changes include the introduction of "darksight scopes" for use on the new Nighttime version of Dire Marsh, as well as folding stock attachments for both the KKV and the other new weapon, the D54 battle pistol. These increase hip-fire accuracy when folded and improve ADS accuracy when unfolded. Bungie is excited by how these weapons "provide options for different playstyles on a single weapon" though I am slightly concerned these weapons risk COD-ifying Marathon's gunplay.

Finally, Season 2 will let you bring several new throwables into the battlefield. The frost mine functions similar to the claymore, but deals frost debuff as well as moderate damage when it explodes. The vector grenade works a bit like Recon's Echo Pulse ability, "highlighting spaces in a large area and any enemies inside its radius". Finally, players will be able to deploy red, green and blue signal flares, which Bungie says are intended for "non-verbal" communication.

In short, a lot is changing in Season 2. And Bungie has big plans for the longer-term future of Marathon. The studio is looking to experiment with both a PvE mode and more dedicated PvP mode, in an attempt to add more variety to its thus-far dedicated extraction shooter.

Its entry into retirement is approaching, but Destiny 2 is being sent out with a bang. After detailing the ways D2 activities are evolving in its end-of-new-content Monument of Triumph update, Bungie today has provided more specifics about the avalanche of new and returning weaponry it's spilling into its various loot pools.

From resurrecting long-absent favorites to retrofitting neglected exotics with an extra jolt of catalyst firepower, Bungie has seemingly updated a staggering number of weapons for its last big outing—so much so that its developers are joking about the physical toll reworking all those dozens of weapons has taken.

Based on the sampling of gear updates Bungie has previewed in its Dev Insights blogs, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call Monument of Triumph the single most substantial armory revamp Destiny has received since launch. Here are some highlights:

• Patrol destinations are getting updated loot pools with tiered drops, including returning weapons to fit the region's theme: Cosmodrome will offer returning Rasputin guns, returning Vex weapons will hit Nessus, etc.
• Gambit's getting its own slate of tiered, reprised Drifter guns. If I don't get a shiny, new Parcel of Stardust, I'll be inconsolable
• Sparrow Racing League is back, offering its own set of new shooting and slashing implements
• Crucible, Trials, and Iron Banner will all enjoy expanded loot pools with reprised and tiered favorites, new armor sets, and a scattering of new guns, too. Hello once again, Better Devils
• Solo Ops will have its own weapon pool. Fireteam Ops will have its own weapon pool. Pinnacle Ops will have its own weapon pool. And Arena Ops, too, will have its own weapon pool featuring reprised Black Armory weapons. Kindled Orchid is returned to me at last
• Pre-Edge of Fate dungeons and raids will drop tiered versions of their weapons and armor
• New and existing tiered guns will offer an option to upgrade their gear tiers, and all legendary crafted weapons will be eligible for conversion into upgradable tiered guns, too
• All exotic weapons will have catalysts. All of them. Yes, even that one. And nine whose existing catalysts only gave stats have been given perks to go with them.

In its final iteration, Destiny 2's sandbox will enjoy a massive amount of new and updated gear. According to a post from Bungie comms manager dmg04 on X, one of the Destiny 2 sandbox devs said "my body physically hurts from the amount of items we were updating and implementing"—and it wouldn't surprise me if they were only partially kidding.

As with many of the welcome changes coming in Destiny 2's send-off, the associated excitement is bittersweet. The unprecedented scale of Monument of Triumph's armory additions comes with some tragic implications: Either these were changes originally intended to lead into further updates—lending credence to the Forbes reporting that most Destiny 2 devs hadn't known about the approaching end of its ongoing development until it was publicly announced—or these were the kinds of patches its devs might have otherwise been able to make were it not for the studio's years of pervasive mismanagement.

"'We're listening,'" said dmg04 in another post on X today, quoting a refrain Destiny players had often been treated to over the years. "Hope you feel it."

So, Destiny 2 is going the way of the dodo—content updates will end in June, and a Destiny 3 likely isn't even in the cards for Bungie. As someone who has had one of my favourite MMOs shut down before my eyes (and later given an official license to operate on a private server, score) I nonetheless commiserate with you.

One thing players might be asking themselves in their grief is—could the game have been saved? Are there any alternate universes in which Destiny might continue on forever. Perhaps into… infinity? This is a really cheesy segue, but the answer is yes, reportedly.

Per Paul Tassi of Forbes, unnamed sources at Bungie claim a soft reboot of D2 was considered in the aftermath of the disastrous expansion Edge of Fate: "One idea was scrapping the two-expansion model and going back to one big expansion again and renaming the game 'Destiny Infinity.' The goal there was a kind of relaunch as opposed to doing a true Destiny 3 to kickstart momentum."

The twice-yearly expansion schedule wound up being a bit contentious, because—well, it led to the aforementioned Edge of Fate, a sour-note follow up to The Final Shape, which PCG's own Destiny 2 expert (and editor-in-chief) Phil Savage called "one of the best expansions in the series' history" in his The Final Shape review.

In other words, changing to a twice-yearly expansion cycle after releasing some of your best work probably wasn't, er, the best choice.

At the very least, Marathon's just-decent performance—we're speaking in industry terms, here, it still did make quite a bit of money—can't be blamed for Destiny 2's death. Well, not entirely. Quoting one of Tassi's sources: "if the game made a billion dollars, would Destiny 2 have a chance to continue? Sure, maybe," but the report states that "no one was sitting there on launch day deciding if its performance would kill Destiny 2 or not."

I cannot say whether a return to form for Destiny 2—or a soft relaunch rebranding the entire thing—would've landed. But call it 20-20 hindsight, I do think anything would've been better for Destiny 2's playerbase than what we got. I shall pour one out for you in MMO solidarity, my friends.

Marathon's second season is just days away from kicking off, and amid all the changes and hype its devs are spreading the word that its first week will be free to play for those prospective players who've been too stingy to try it out so far (me).

"Season 2 begins on June 2 and kicks off with an Open Play Week from June 2 to June 9," a blog post explains. "During the Open Play Week, the full game will be available to play on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and any progress you make will carry over into Season 2. This will be a great time to invite your friends to crew up as everyone will be starting out on a clean slate." All you have to bring is internet access which requires a paid-for subscription on console (classic).

If you do decide to make the jump then waiting for you will be pure chaos in season 2 by the sound of things. "The narrative theme of season 2 is escalation. The UESC is tired of getting pushed around by the runners and they're fighting back," Nick Ardizzone, associate narrative director, says in a dev diary. "As their opposition escalates, so too does the anomaly. One of your jobs is to find out why."

Alongside this narrative shift players will be able to find new places of interest, housing high level loot like the Observation science deck where UESC has been studying the anomaly. And will also experience "Psychosis" and "hallucinations" as this pitch black map begins to mess you up—you do get a flashlight though, so not all is lost.

Season 2 also comes with a bunch of resets, changes, and additions. There's two new guns: the D54 Battle Pistol with an integrated retina optic and the KKV, a small arms SMG with an integrated suppressor that's apparently "excellent at mowing down anything immediately right in front of you". Honestly, that last one may be enough on its own to convince me to try Marathon's second season out.

All of these changes and additions are to ensure everyone "gets this fresh start and they have the chance to go back through that journey from zero to hero," Emanuel Rosu, production director, explains.

"The seasonal reset allows us to change the journey of the things that you're going to care about," Brenton Woodrow, senior design lead, adds. "When a player starts a new season I want them to feel like we've been able to recapture the magic of week one of Marathon's launch. Everything's new, you don't know what's valuable yet, that feel of discovery is going to be exciting and push you to new stories and new journeys along your seasonal progression."

Destiny 2 is over. Marathon is great but not doing numbers. What is FPS institution Bungie to do? According to our very attractive and informed readers, whom we love and value in a normal way, it's Destiny 3 by a country mile.

I included a poll on the matter in our story a few days ago about the community reaction to Destiny 2 ceasing new content updates. I left it open for a week because it's the first one I made and I'm doing my best here, but I think we can call it now. PC Gamer readers really, really want Bungie to play the hits. At the time of writing, the results are:

• 74% Destiny 3
• 14% a new IP
• 6% transcend corporate animosity to make Halo 7
• 4% Double down on Marathon (ouch)
• 2% Reboot Bungie's cult classic dark fantasy RTS series, Myth (realizing now I should have thrown a bone to the Oni fans too)

It's not even close, and I really expected more hopeless romantics to say "Damn the odds, I want Halo." Destiny 3 really does make the most sense, and it's why many of us at PCG assumed the announcement of Destiny 2's end of life was made in the first place. Only one problem: It's not happening, at least not any time soon.

According to Bloomberg, Destiny 3 is not in active production, and the major limiting factor is the budget required. That's not to say Bungie's skunkworks isn't ideating on what a third Destiny game might look like, but given the long lead time of contemporary triple-A, Destiny 3 only being in some form of preproduction now realistically means it couldn't be out until the 2030s.

Our distant second place, "some kind of something new.," similarly feels unlikely. The incubator FPS codenamed Gummy Bears appears to have survived the layoff bloodbaths at Bungie in recent years, but it's also been spun off into its own studio.

My darkest secret wish, that Bungie just make a normal game with a campaign and stuff, feels almost laughably absurd. Sony lending Bungie to Microsoft for Halo 7 will happen sometime after world peace, but before we reach Alpha Centauri, and I mostly threw Myth in there as a joke.

That's not a great place to be in as a studio: The thing everyone wants has effectively been foreclosed on, all the alternatives feel preposterous, and no one seems to seriously consider the possibility that Marathon could become a company-sustaining, Destiny-sized going concern. There have been more shocking come-from-behind stories in gaming, but not many.

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.

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.

"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.

The announcement of Destiny 2's imminent end of live service development wasn't entirely unexpected news, given Bungie's well-documented struggles in recent years, but it's an abrupt conclusion for a game series that's now left with an uncertain future. Reportedly, Bungie hasn't yet greenlit a project for a Destiny 3, meaning many of the setting's ongoing narrative threads are being left without resolution for the foreseeable future.

The threat of the Nine has gone unaddressed. The inscrutable machinations of the Vex network are still a mystery. And we may never face Xivu Arath, the Hive god of war—an antagonist that Bungie had invested years of seasonal storytelling into shaping an apocalyptic menace. But according to former Bungie senior narrative designer Robert Brookes, Destiny's devs had tried—repeatedly—to give Xivu Arath the debut that players have been left to dream of.

Players first learned of Xivu Arath back in Destiny 1's Taken King expansion. As Guardians unearthed the hidden history of the Hive and their adherence to the cruel calculus of the Sword Logic, they learned that the race of intergalactic necromancers worship a trio of siblings who had ascended through ages of ritualized violence and occult sacrament into a trinity of omnicidal gods.

Chief among them was Oryx, the Taken King himself, who players felled at the end of his expansion. Savathun, the Witch Queen, would later serve as the titular antagonist of her own expansion in Destiny 2 after snaring players in schemes and plots that stretched across the setting. And finally, Xivu Arath—a bellowing, belligerent warmonger who had been built through multiple seasons of storytelling into one of the greatest extant threats in the Destiny universe. She'd become a beloved figure in the process, despite only briefly appearing on-screen—and now she might never arrive in earnest.

According to Brookes, however, that wasn't for lack of effort. Responding on X to one of the many players expressing disappointment over Xivu Arath never getting her own expansion before Destiny 2's abrupt ending, Brookes—who had worked at Bungie from 2020 to 2024—said "you'd be surprised how many times this was pitched for D2."

Brookes' comment indicates that there had been a repeated effort to give Xivu Arath a full story campaign treatment, and while that's frustrating, I don't know that it is surprising. She was the central antagonist of 2023's Season of the Deep, which granted her a striking amount of humanity even as she spent her interactions with the player howling caps lock-captioned threats. She remained a driving force in the following Season of the Witch, and—in the wake of The Final Shape—appeared for the climactic capstone of Episode: Heresy with fellow beloved Destiny baddie Eris Morn.

Xivu Arath's continued emphasis in Destiny's ongoing narrative felt like an obvious escalation towards her own expansion. But as the fallout of Sony's troubled 2022 acquisition of Bungie compounded, causing continued layoffs and studio turmoil as Bungie's new owners were left footing the bill for damage dealt by years of misguided leadership under its former CEO and vintage car enthusiast Pete Parsons, Xivu Arath's time in the spotlight never materialized.

Instead, Destiny 2 was made to suffer through Edge of Fate, an expansion that earned a dreadful reception and dwindling player numbers. Renegades, the Star Wars-themed followup that must have seemed to someone in a boardroom like a surefire way to coax revenue out of D2's remaining players, couldn't manage a redemption arc.

Maybe someday we'll get to clash swords with Xivu Arath as players had expected to for years. Until then, she's yet another casualty in a long and sordid history that, as far as we know, has been brought to a sudden end.

Today's not-entirely-unexpected announcement that Destiny 2 will no longer receive "live service content updates" has some fans hoping that Bungie is performing a controlled demolition to make way for Destiny 3.

According to sources who spoke to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, however, Bungie isn't immediately buckling down on Destiny 3, and doesn't yet have any specific project greenlit for the Destiny 2 development team to start on.

There will be layoffs at the company, Bloomberg reports.

None of this rules out the eventual development of Destiny 3, or another game in the Destiny universe, but if Bungie isn't even past the pitching and prototyping stage, we can expect it to be a long time before we hear about anything other than Marathon, which Schreier says the studio will invest more in.

Bungie has had a hard time getting new projects out the door. In 2024, the company laid off more than 200 employees after cancelling a Destiny spin-off called Payback. Former Bungie CEO Pete Parsons said at the time that the studio had been stretched too thin across "several incubation projects."

The word "incubation" came up again in today's announcement, which stated that Bungie is moving on from Destiny 2 to "begin work incubating" its next games.

Extraction shooter Marathon did make it to launch, and is quite good, though its sales aren't where Bungie or Sony would like them to be. In a clear attempt to attract more of the Arc Raiders audience to its shores, Bungie plans to add a more casual PvE mode to the game in an upcoming update.

I've reached out to Bungie for comment on its post-Destiny 2 plans.

Destiny 2 is over. Bungie announced today that its last "live service" update is coming in June, after which Bungie will move on to other projects it has "incubating."

Fans are naturally upset, though not entirely caught off guard: The mood is rueful and a bit resigned, with plenty of gallows humor and speculation about Bungie's future. And the big question is whether Bungie can bounce back from the end of Destiny 2 and a so-so launch for Marathon to do what everyone expects it to: Make Destiny 3.

Longtime Destiny streamer Aztecross is hosting a live reaction to the news at the time of writing. Cross seems optimistic about the series' future, asserting that "until I see the words 'Destiny 3 will never happen,' I'm going to believe."

As for what he'd want to see from such a game, Cross advocated for a return to a "50/50 split between gunplay and abilities" in the game's balance, but said that he'd "leave narrative [requests] for narrative-minded people" like the Destiny lore expert Byf.

User TastyOreoFriend on the Destiny subreddit noted that there is still the matter of Bungie's incubation projects: Last year, The Verge reported that one of them, codenamed "Gummy Bears," was spun off into an entirely new studio. The outlook is dim for the others, however, given the waves of layoffs Bungie has suffered in recent years.

Content creator Chris Ray Gun called the announcement "bittersweet." He argued a position similar to PC Gamer brand director (and Destiny freak) Tim Clark: The beloved Final Shape expansion made for a satisfying end to Destiny 2's arc, diminished by what's come after.

Some, like Master-Molasses420 on the Destiny subreddit, are taking the time to eulogize the game. Others are just trying to laugh through the pain. We may all remember this moment in the years to come: "Where were you when Destiny 2 was kill?"

What do you think is next for Bungie? This company has survived momentous transitions in culture and technology before: Chicago to Washington. Microsoft to Activision to Sony. Mac to Xbox to PlayStation to PC (and back to PlayStation). Is Destiny 3 walking through that door, or is this just the middle of the beginning of the end for the House that Halo Built?

No matter what, the deck seems stacked against an industry legend: Marathon⁠—though excellent⁠—has not performed like the studio needed. Destiny, the series that defined Bungie's last 15 years (including D1's development), is on hiatus for who knows how long.

Sony has signaled a move away from both PC and live service games⁠—both form the studio's heartland. The ball is in Bungie's court to come from behind and prove its naysayers wrong. It's managed this before, but things have never felt quite so dire.

It's the true end of an era, as Bungie has announced that Destiny 2's "live service content update" on June 9 will be its last.

"While our love for Destiny 2 has not changed," the studio wrote in today's shocking announcement, "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."

"We're proud of Destiny 2, the places it took us, and the legacy it has created. Because of you all, our universe is vast, built on years of shared stories, adventures, and victories," Bungie wrote. "From the Cosmodrome to the Pale Heart to the Lawless Frontier, we have forged life-long memories and friendships with you all."

The end of live service updates for Destiny 2 signals "a new beginning for Bungie" which will see it moving to "incubating" new games, the studio said. Bungie also committed to ensuring that Destiny 2, like the original Destiny before it, will remain playable. To that end, the June 9 update will make some big changes to the game: "A collection of love letters to players across all activity types within Destiny 2," as Bungie put it.

"Our goal is to ensure Destiny 2 can be a place you come back to and feel rewarded no matter what you play, while also having enough variety in activities to fit your mood for a given play session. Whether you're looking to play competitively, slay a god or two, or just spend some time exploring the destinations... there will be something for you."

It's a stunning ending for a game that had enough cachet to compel Sony to drop $3.6 billion to acquire Bungie just four short years ago. But the studio's Sony years have not gone smoothly: Destiny 2 floundered as Bungie leadership poured money into dead-end "incubations" and burned through community goodwill that once seemed boundless.

After years of mismanagement and botches, a full Destiny 2 turnaround was out of reach, but as put by PC Gamer's Tim Clark—a man who once ignored multiple tornado warnings so he could finish a raid—the fact that a game of this size and significance has effectively been abandoned and left to rot is an absolute disgrace.

The full list of changes coming in the final Destiny 2 update can be found at Bungie.net. Notably, and in fine Bungie form, the Eververse store will remain open and Silver, Destiny 2's premium currency, will remain available for purchase. More information will also be shared in upcoming This Week in Destiny showcases.

Marathon director Joe Ziegler has laid out Bungie's vision for the next few seasons of Marathon. If you're looking for a statement that confronts all the doomerism around the extraction shooter's Steam numbers or a followup on Sony's writedown of the studio's value, you won't find in Ziegler's latest communiqué. What you will find is a recap of how things are going in the game itself, including some big experiments in the works.

The studio's working on a new map that "leans into alien elements and mind warping debuffs," for instance, but that's still way off. The next Runner shell is a defensive kit named Sentinel. But the most interesting of the reveals are undoubtedly two planned PvE-focused modes coming next season.

"We want to evolve Marathon as a whole to be an experience where you can find more novel ways to play when you're stressed out from a nail-biting run and just need to cool off or have fun without the stress. Options where you can go full sweat or lean back and chill," Ziegler wrote.

To that end, look out for the following sometime in season 2:

• In Season 2, we will be experimenting with two modes, one at the beginning of the season and one towards the middle/latter half of the season. The experimental mode at the beginning of the season will focus more on PvE, but with a light touch of PvP. The second experimental mode will be a PvE-only mode that’s focused on crews being tasked with completing objectives together and making some progress across matches.

I know Destiny diehards who will be excited to hear that, especially the purely PvE mode. Marathon does really only have one mental mode (stressed the heck out), so I see potential in PvE options that let rival squads lay down their swords.

But before you interpret that as Bungie waving the white flag and just making Destiny again, well, PvP is the big strength of Marathon, and Bungie wants to try new stuff in that arena as well.

• We’ll continue to run experimental queues beyond these two offerings for Season 2 and beyond, testing the waters around other mechanics (such as perhaps a more purely PvP-focused mode) with the potential for these to become part of the core game loop or permanent new ways to play.

From the outside looking in, I'm skeptical that Marathon's existing maps will adapt nicely to a PvE format. There isn't a huge variety of UESC enemies to fight, and even the meanest boss fights in the game are balanced around squads of three. My gut says a meaningful co-op mode would take a lot of dedicated design work to get right. But this is Bungie we're talking about, so that might be exactly what it has in mind.

And here's a first look at Sentinel:

More will be shared on season 2-specific changes, like faster faction progression and new options to boost your runner stats, the week of May 25.

As much as I love Marathon, its progression hits like a brick wall after a few dozen hours. Quests become longer multi-step treks across maps around the same time high-tier upgrades start asking for dozens of items that I've encountered maybe four times.

These are issues that Bungie is seemingly testing against in an "end of season' update coming on May 19. The big highlight? Locked room keys—an extremely rare drop that grants access to the best loot rooms on Tau Ceti—are becoming guaranteed drops for on-map events.

"Locked room keys are guaranteed to drop from Wardens for the remainder of the season," the Bungie blog post reads. "Additionally, map events like Intercept, Lockdown, Warden spawns, Convoy, and Anomaly will now be guaranteed on each run, so you can benefit from their better rewards even more often."

On top of that, Warden bosses will now appear at more locations on Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and Outpost. Sounds like room keys will go from a thing that I just expect to never have to a regular occurrence in Marathon's loot pool, which is definitely a good thing.

And hey, Bungie's taking the orange cones off the entrance to Cryo Archive. The raid map will be open 24/7 for the remainder of season 1. At the same time, Ranked Cryo Archive is also coming—that playlist will have a low stakes 3,000 credit buy-in and a high stakes 10,000 credit buy-in.

A few other ways Marathon is either speeding things up or getting generous:

• Faction experience gains are increased "across the board" for the rest of season 1
• Key templates will no longer break if you're downed. Instead, you can turn templates into keys by finding a Matter Fixative item dropped by UESC bots (similar to keeping your free kit in a Rook run).
• Wall safes will now have a chance of dropping deluxe keys
• Quick Rook runs will be more convenient, as the Signal Mask ability will last longer while sprinting

Bungie is specifying which of these changes are only for the rest of season 1, but the studio has a track record of experimenting with changes that become permanent shortly after, so consider any of this stuff on the table to stick around. What is definitely happening, as the blog specifies, is faster faction progression.

"Season 2: Nightfall begins on June 2 and brings the new Night Marsh zone, a new Runner shell, new weapons, a new system to customize your Runner shell stats called The Cradle, faster faction progression, several quality-of-life updates based on your feedback, and more. Stay tuned for more details about Season 2, with full reveals coming the week of May 25."