Destiny 2 reportedly moving away from annual expansions after The Final Shape amid declining sales, Bungie apparently planning more Into the Light-style free updates

Destiny 2 is moving away from its annual expansion model and releasing smaller updates for the foreseeable future, potentially leading to a rebranding effort to make the game more approachable for new players.

On the heels of seismic layoffs at Bungie and rumors of "the next Destiny" going back on the shelf as the studio reallocates development resources, Bloomberg reports that the very nature of Destiny 2 content is due for big changes with Bungie moving away from the annual release model that's kept the MMO afloat for years. 

Citing 10 current and former Bungie employees, Bloomberg reports that a Bungie leader recently held a meeting to explain that, with expansion sales declining year over year, Destiny 2 will shift away from annual expansions going forward. This lines up with reports of the poorly received Lightfall expansion outselling the warmly received Final Shape. If true, now that The Final Shape has wrapped up the 10-year Light and Darkness Saga, new Destiny 2 content may look dramatically different going forward, even compared to the Episodes that have replaced long-running Seasons. 

The far future of Destiny 2 content remains unclear – Bungie has revealed Year 11 with the codename Frontiers, and teased a return to crafting new worlds – but Bloomberg does add that "in the coming months," Bungie will release smaller updates comparable to the pre-Final Shape Into the Light update which introduced the well-liked Onslaught horde mode. Like Into the Light, these updates will reportedly be free, and will also release alongside activity overhauls seemingly meant to keep hardcore players on the hook during this transition period for the game. 

Into the Light was great, and Bloomberg notes that some Bungie staff are "optimistic" about the game's future despite these harsh setbacks, but optimism is in short supply among the broader Destiny 2 community right now. The Final Shape brought the game itself out of the nosedive caused by Lightfall, but just as community goodwill began to recover, Bungie lost hundreds more developers to mismanagement, dragging the tone around the MMO right back down. 

This report also sheds some light on what "the next Destiny," codenamed Payback, might have been, clarifying claims from reporter Jason Schreier that it was never going to be Destiny 3 – instead, as many have speculated, Bungie will stick to Destiny 2 while looking to make the MMO more approachable for new players through a potential rebranding. 

Payback, meanwhile, was reportedly canceled months ago and billed as a third-person, open-world, puzzle-lite action game taking notes from the likes of Warframe and Genshin Impact. Payback was apparently thought of as a standalone spinoff, not an evolution of Destiny 2, and its cancellation wasn't the result of the recent layoffs, but rather a function of Bungie shutting down incubation projects to bring resources back to Destiny 2 and now Marathon. 

Bungie previously said it would be "building on the Coils and Onslaughts" going forward.