Why there will never be another Destiny

Ten years ago today, Activision published a new shooter from Halo developer Bungie: Destiny.

Although ‘a shooter’ is perhaps a tad reductive, since it was above and beyond anything Bungie – or indeed other studios – had produced.

“When Destiny originally launched, there was nothing quite like it – even figuring out how to communicate its genre was a massive communication exercise for the marketing teams,” indie developer, consultant, and noted Destiny fan Rami Ismail tells GamesIndustry.biz. “It was an FPS, sure, and structured like an MMO but not quite ‘massive’. It was PvE with a big campaign, but also PvP. It took the ‘looter shooter’ and made that a very successful live service model.

“That combination became one of the ‘things to make’ for almost half a decade, before Fortnite came along. In that way, like every trend setting game, Destiny was both a boon and a curse. If anything, it was the first major indicator that live service was going to be the thing for the decade since.”

“Destiny deserves to be studied as the encapsulation of a very specific period in the development of video games, one that I don’t think we’ll ever get back to”

Rachel Weber, IGN

IGN managing editor (and GamesIndustry.biz alum) Rachel Weber adds that not only was Destiny the first game to nail the appeal of a shared world shooter, it also demonstrated Bungie’s continuing prowess when it came to world-building and storytelling. “

“It stood out as more than just a pretty shader applied to the same old pew pew mechanics. It was a rare idea that appealed to the lucrative competitive shooter and MMORPG crowds, an audience who were the first to make peace with microtransactions and content chopped up into expansions.”

Statistics from Circana’s Retail Tracking Service help add more context to Destiny’s success: since it first launched in September 2014, Destiny has become the 34th biggest video game franchise of all time in terms of US full-game dollar sales across physical and digital – and that’s without microtransactions and DLC expansions.

The original Destiny was the 30th best-selling game between September 2014 and July 2024, beating Fallout 4 but behind Elden Ring. Destiny 2, meanwhile, is 61st – that’s again for full-game sales only.

Bungie caught the industry’s attention at the time and, as with any other games sensation, Destiny inspired others to follow in its footsteps.

The Destiny effect

Ampere Analysis’ Piers Harding-Rolls says Destiny stands as the most successful franchise to combine the looter shooter genre with the live service model, while Bungie’s handling of the shift to free-to-play in October 2019 became “a live service blueprint for retaining a happy userbase.”

The analyst says you see the influence of Destiny in titles such as EA and BioWare’s Anthem and Ubisoft’s The Division. Even in 2024, we’re seeing releases that draw inspiration from Bungie’s title, such as Sony’s Helldivers 2 and Nexon’s The First Descendant. But while some of these games have fared well, Harding-Rolls notes that most publishers have “underestimated the investment and expertise needed to deliver something of the scale and success of Destiny and Destiny 2.”

“There are lots of games that were influenced by Destiny and likewise there were lots of games that inspired Bungie to build Destiny. Most games inspired by the Destiny franchise have been unable to deliver its longevity and long-term engagement,” he says, citing Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, Outriders, and Babylon’s Fall as prime examples of Destiny-inspired games that struggled or outright failed.

“Most of these games failed because they didn’t have the depth of content, the polished product or the gameplay quality delivered by Destiny. They were not good enough to pull gamers away from their chosen live service games for a long period of time.”

“Everyone’s leaned on the ‘Bungie magic’ and the rabbit hasn’t always come out of the hat in the way everyone had hoped”

Mat Piscatella, Circana

Weber adds: “The cursed ghost town that was Anthem encapsulates all the mistakes the companies chasing the Destiny dollar made. There were the stories of a troubled, directionless development, technical problems that made it an unreliable experience whether you were trying to play solo or with friends, and a complete underestimation of how fast players would burn through content.

“We won’t ever see another Destiny. It’s had ten years of constant change, highs and lows, and multiple expansions – you’re never going to be able to sell that formula to a boardroom of moneymen. The risks are too huge, the challenge is too big, and – as Concord has shown – the patience required is too high.

“Destiny deserves to be studied as the encapsulation of a very specific period in the development of video games, one that I don’t think we’ll ever get back to.”

Circana’s executive director for video games Mat Piscatella says that, while Destiny showed how titles could hold players and their wallets for long periods of time, titles such as Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, and Grand Theft Auto Online have since “perfected the formula.”

“Most games inspired by Destiny have been unable to deliver its longevity and long-term engagement”

Piers Harding-Rolls, Ampere Analysis

“Since then, Anthem, Remnant 2, The Division, Borderlands 3, and of course Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League have all entered the market following at least parts of the Destiny formula,” he says. “None of these games quite reached the success Destiny achieved. I’m not sure that any future titles will either.

“While the gameplay elements, social hooks, and loot aspects of the game will always be attractive to players, I’m not sure we’ll see another self-contained game like it succeed in the same way due to changing player tastes and the competitive offerings from things like Fortnite.”

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter suggests Destiny’s influence can even be seen in other genres.

“No two games are identical – except maybe Battlefield and Call of Duty – but it’s clear that Destiny begat Overwatch, Apex Legends, and maybe some elements of Fortnite,” he says. “The variations in characters (for Destiny, particularly with the introduction of alien races) keeps the RPG element of the game fresh, and there is lots of variability of weapons, making the game seem [new] each season. I suspect that we haven’t seen the end of RPG shooters.”

The future of Bungie

Given the visible influence Destiny has had on some of the highest-profile multiplayer games over the past ten years – and especially over some of the biggest failures – it would be easy to argue that Bungie’s title alone set the industry on its current path, shifting more and more to a live service model.

Piscatella disagrees with this – “It’s always been its own weird thing in a way” – instead arguing that the biggest impact Destiny has had on the industry lies in Bungie and its relationship with publishers.

Destiny was published as the first title in a ten-year deal between Bungie and Activision Blizzard, the first agreement the studio had secured after reclaiming its independence from Microsoft. The partnership ended two years early, however, with Activision claiming Destiny “was not meeting [its] financial expectations” but that the split was a “mutual agreement.”

Bungie survived four years as an independent before it was acquired by Sony for $3.6 billion, part of the PlayStation firm’s bid to establish itself in the live service space. Reports have suggested that, while Bungie was originally given a good level of autonomy, Sony has considered taking over if the studio fails to meet its financial targets.

“I’m not sure [the Activision deal] went the way anyone really wished it to,” says Piscatella. “And looking now at the post-Sony acquisition era, it’s also been a bit bumpy, to say the least. There have been the multiple waves of layoffs of course, and the transition of employees from Bungie to Sony roles.

“Destiny has been the thing that has tied these eras together. Everyone’s leaned on the ‘Bungie magic’ and the rabbit hasn’t always come out of the hat in the way everyone had hoped.”

Despite all this, Destiny 2 seems to be faring well. Harding-Rolls tells us the latest expansion, The Final Shape, saw player numbers across PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam reach nearly seven million, and while this has dropped off since launch, there’s a solid number of players returning every day.

Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker shows that the average active Destiny 2 player spent more than 25 hours on the game in August – a figure Piscatella tells us has remained fairly steady since January 2021, albeit with spikes around the release of new content.

“It’s a dedicated player base, although one that has contracted a bit in number [over the years],” he adds. “All things considered, Destiny 2 remains a strong franchise, but one that has been losing a bit of its player base over the past few years. But those players that are playing remain as dedicated to it as they’ve ever been.”

This is another area in which Destiny has demonstrated Bungie’s ability to do something few studios can handle in quite the same way: catering to multiple different audiences simultaneously.

“Destiny must often be one of the most thankless games to work on in the world,” Rami Ismail says. “It’s enormous, but due to the diverse ways audiences can engage with it, that audience is split along very strong ideological lines. You’ve got PvP, PvE, even PvPvE, and then in each of those categories, you’ve got everything from fashionistas and glitchmakers to meta hunters and challenge players, casual players and hard-hardcore players, loremasters and influencers – and they all want something else.

“Destiny has always been super interesting to watch from the perspective of a director and designer, but I don’t envy them. That’s a monster to tame.”

Rami Ismail

“Destiny is weird because the game wouldn’t work without all those aspects, but it also can’t quite work because of all of those aspects. It often finds itself swerving wildly between different audience groups, angering any one group only long enough to satisfy the others – and I often wonder how much longer the community and the game can offer that elasticity. So far, they’ve always managed to keep that (just) within bounds, but with the severity of the layoffs and the limitations on their available legacy knowledge and experience, I hope they can keep that up.

“Destiny has always been super interesting to watch from a director/designer perspective, but I don’t envy them. That’s a monster to tame.”

So what of the future? Concord’s collapse saw ‘Destiny 3’ trending on social media last week, so it’s clear that demand for Bungie’s sci-fi shooter isn’t drying up any time soon. Whether or not a third game could capture the same success of its forebears remains less clear; the industry has changed so much, other live service games dominate, and (as established above) the original Destiny went beyond what anyone expected.

“Destiny has evolved so far beyond that first release a decade ago that I’m sure even Bungie couldn’t have predicted how layered the game would become thanks to the expansions and sequel,” Weber concludes.

“I’m sure at this point Destiny is down to the true faithful in terms of player numbers, and post-PlayStation’s Concord fumble they’ll be sweating about the future of the game under Sony’s leadership… I really hope Bungie’s next project, Marathon, survives Sony’s strategy and builds on that foundation of long-term love to keep that clan of Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks alive.”