Destiny 2 is switching to offering two "medium-sized" expansions per year, because its annual add-ons had "started to feel too formulaic"
"We believe it’s time for Destiny to change and evolve, and that our community wants this game to grow and innovate too."
Bungie has announced that starting in 2025, it'll be switching to offering two "medium-sized" expansions for Destiny 2 per year, rather than the annual expansions it'd previously constructed its plans around. Why? Well, according the game's director, things were getting "too rigid" and feel a bit "formulaic" in terms of these add-ons.
This change comes not long after The Final Shape arrived to a pretty favourable reception back in June, but was subsequently followed by Bungie laying off 220 staff amid some other big changes. The cuts were reportedly in the works long before that expansion arrived and couldn't have been prevented even if it had blown away all expectations, with Bungie asserting that it was still "committed to Destiny" after them.
As teased, it's now provided some more info as to what that support will look like going forwards. The big news? Out goes the established focus on offering annual expansions, in favour of doing "two medium-sized expansions, one every six months", and four free "major updates" per year.
"I’ve personally been working on Destiny for 15 years and it still excites me creatively," game director Tyson Green wrote of the change, "There are not many games I could say that about. But at the same time, we recognize that it has become too rigid. Expansions have started to feel too formulaic and are over too quickly with little replay value. Seasons and episodes keep getting bigger but can still feel like you are just going through the motions."
"We’ve loved creating annual expansions and are especially proud of The Final Shape. But the truth is that they dominate almost all our development effort. We need to free ourselves up to explore and innovate with how we deliver Destiny 2 content so we can invest in areas of the game that will feel more impactful to players," he continued, adding that these new expansions "will depart from the one-shot campaign structure we’ve been using essentially unchanged since Shadowkeep, and each will be an opportunity to explore exciting new formats instead."
Alongside announcing this change, Bungie's also provided an updated roadmap for the game, which you can check out above. In summer 2025, you'll be getting a paid expansion currently dubbed "Codename: Apollo", with free updates codenamed "Arsenal" and "Surge" arriving during its duration from summer to autumn. Then, in winter 2025, you'll be getting a paid expansion codenamed "Behemoth", with two currently unnamed free updates arriving during that one too.
How do you feel about this pretty seismic change to Destiny 2? Let us know below!