So, what is the best case scenario for Destiny's future?

Spirits are up in the Destiny community – a sentence I didn’t really expect to write in 2025. But while morale is high, player numbers are down, with the game peaking at 70k players (just on Steam) on the launch day of its most recent expansion. Compare that to the 316k Steam peak in 2023.

It’s not ideal, you could say. But we have literally no idea what the studio’s internal goals for The Fate Saga are, so we can’t extrapolate much from any of that information other than “hey, it probably would be better if more people were playing the game right now.”

Most of the recent positive energy is coming from Destiny 2: Renegades, the Star Wars-themed expansion that launched on Dec. 2. But some of it is also stemming from “leaks” that Destiny 3 is in development alongside some kind of Destiny Classic.

Now I want to be very clear here: I’m not trying to convince you that these rumors are true. As far as I can tell, they’re barely better than the speculation anyone could come up with and post on Twitter. Still, now seems about as good a time as any to discuss why these rumors are so exciting for fans. With the caveat that I have no insider information here, let’s speculate wildly about what the best case scenario for Destiny’s future seems to be right now.

Let me start out by saying I’d be very surprised if Destiny 3 wasn’t “in development.” 

Now put the Reddit account down for a second, buddy. “In development” could mean a lot of different things. It could mean that it’s been in relatively small scale development since The Final Shape (possible), it could be on a kind of mild hiatus waiting for the bulk of the Marathon team to ship that game (probable), or it could be in the very early design stages with a small handful of developers working behind the scenes (likely). This is not a game coming out in 2028. But it could be a game coming out in the early 2030s.

Why do I think that? Because it makes too much sense. Sony spent a lot of money on Bungie, and while they may have re-evaluated the acquisition’s value recently, I don’t think they’ll be scrapping anything anytime soon… unless Marathon is a massive failure. I think Marathon is poised for a comeback, and I don't think it'll fail to the degree necessary for Sony to shutter Bungie. 

So this is the situation: Marathon needs to not flop and Destiny 2 isn’t able to pull the numbers it once did. What Bungie and Sony need, more than anything, is something safe.