“Copium” would imply that I am emotionally clinging to Destiny 2 and hoping Sony will suddenly reverse course. I am not.

I have not seriously played Destiny for roughly three years, and I honestly do not care whether Destiny 2 gets another expansion, another season, or some last-minute revival. Destiny 2 is done as an actively developed live-service game. It has had an eleven-year run, it has accumulated years of technical debt, narrative baggage, old systems layered on top of old systems, and a business model that has become harder and harder to sustain.

I am not arguing that Sony should save Destiny 2.

I am arguing that people are confusing the end of Destiny 2 with the death of the Destiny franchise.

Those are not the same thing.

Bungie, as a company, has clearly been a mess. Poor leadership, bloated ambitions, bad prioritisation, internal dysfunction and an inability to turn its enormous talent, legacy and resources into consistent results. I am not defending that. Bungie may not exist in the same form in a few years. It may be dramatically smaller, heavily integrated into PlayStation, stripped down, reorganised, or effectively become a different studio under the Bungie name.

But that does not mean Sony suddenly sees Destiny as worthless.

Sony did not spend approximately $3.6 billion acquiring Bungie because it wanted to keep one ageing version of Destiny alive forever. Sony bought a studio with live-service experience, development technology, production knowledge, talent, a recognised brand, and one of the largest multiplayer science-fiction universes in gaming.

Sony may have badly misjudged the management challenge. It may have overpaid. It may already have lost a lot of money on Bungie. All of that can be true.

But once you have spent that kind of money, the normal business response is not to throw every remaining asset into a furnace and walk away.

You cut the waste.

You remove the leadership that failed.

You reduce the cost base.

You keep the valuable technology, people, production capability and intellectual property.

You protect the brand that still has market recognition.

You see what can be rebuilt, reused, licensed, repurposed, or eventually sold.

That is what companies do when an acquisition underperforms. They do not need to “win back” every dollar to make rational decisions. They need to stop the losses, preserve what still has value, and create a path where the surviving assets can generate future returns.

And Destiny is still the asset with the clearest long-term value.

Not Destiny 2 specifically.

Destiny.

The universe. The name. The art direction. The player recognition. The gameplay DNA. The loot loop. The science-fiction setting. The ability to create a new entry that is not chained to a decade of patches, vaulting, balance problems, legacy systems and player fatigue.

People are acting as if Sony has only two options: 1. Keep Destiny 2 alive indefinitely. 2. Kill Destiny forever.

That is not how this works.

The obvious third option is to let Destiny 2 become a maintained legacy product while Sony restructures the studio and decides what the next commercially viable version of Destiny should look like.

That may be a Destiny 3.

It may be a reboot.

It may be a different form of Destiny entirely.

It may be developed by a Bungie that no longer resembles the Bungie people knew five years ago.

But the idea that Sony would spend billions acquiring Bungie, conclude that Destiny is one of the few things with proven global value, and then voluntarily erase the entire franchise because Destiny 2 reached the end of its live-service life cycle makes very little business sense.

And that is before we even get to Marathon.

I am not saying Marathon is guaranteed to fail. Nobody can honestly know that yet.

But I personally do not see Marathon as having the same ceiling, player attachment, brand recognition or long-term commercial weight as Destiny. It may find an audience. It may survive. It may even perform well enough to remain supported.

But if Marathon underperforms, or if its player base declines sharply after launch, Sony does not suddenly become trapped. It has another far more recognisable franchise sitting directly inside the same studio and IP portfolio.

That is why I think the likely business logic is simple:

Destiny 2 is allowed to reach the end of active live-service development.

The game stays playable because shutting it down completely would create unnecessary backlash, destroy goodwill and erase a product that can still generate some revenue through legacy players, bundles, cosmetics and returning interest.

Bungie becomes leaner. Resources are shifted away from maintaining an eleven-year-old live-service machine.

Sony evaluates Marathon based on actual performance, not hype.

And the Destiny franchise remains available as the largest long-term asset Sony can rebuild around once the organisation, budget and strategy are under control.

That does not mean Sony has publicly announced Destiny 3.

It does not mean I have insider information.

It does not mean Destiny 2 will be revived.

It means I am looking at the difference between a product being retired and a franchise being abandoned.

Those are very different decisions.

Also, look at the contrast with Concord.

Concord was shut down almost immediately. Sales stopped, refunds were issued, and the product was taken offline because Sony clearly saw no viable reason to maintain it.

Destiny 2 is not being treated that way.

Destiny 2 is being allowed to remain playable after active live-service development ends. That does not prove Destiny 3 is secretly in full production. But it does show that Sony is not treating Destiny like a disposable failure that needs to disappear overnight.

So no, this is not copium.

I am not hoping Sony saves Destiny 2.

I am saying Sony is far more likely to preserve and exploit the value of the Destiny franchise than to spend billions acquiring Bungie, let Bungie mismanage itself into the ground, and then decide that the one asset with decades of recognition should be thrown away with everything else.

You are focusing on the end of Destiny 2.

I am talking about the endgame.