Paul Tassi Says Destiny 2's End is Just "Cruel Math"

Forbes journalist Paul Tassi, who has covered Bungie and Destiny closely for years, posted a thread on X talking about why Sony shut down Destiny 2.  Sony reportedly ended support for the game as a form of corporate retaliation against Bungie over Marathon's underwhelming performance. 

According to Tassi's Bungie sources, the explanation is far less dramatic than the narrative that has been spreading. He said, "This is almost entire(ly) financial, simply Destiny 2 cost more than it made. Math. Cruel math, but math.”

Destiny 2’s “Revenge Theory”

Tassi traced the origin of the more sensational framing to a specific and fairly narrow source. The reports suggesting Sony leadership wanted to punish Bungie probably originated with PlayStation employee observers rather than anyone with direct insight into how leadership actually arrived at the decision.

He noted that some people at PlayStation have publicly wondered why Destiny 2 support is ending. Tassi pointed out that PlayStation employs roughly 12K people, and a handful expressing confusion is not the same as confirmation of corporate intent from the top.

Tassi was careful to separate two things that have been getting conflated. It is genuinely true that Bungie has underperformed relative to what Sony wanted when it acquired the studio for $3.6 billion USD in 2022. Marathon has struggled to retain players since launch and has been a costly miss. 

Despite ending new content, Bungie has no plans to wind down Destiny 2's actual servers. The game is not being shut off. It is being frozen in its current state, which is a meaningfully different outcome than the game disappearing entirely. The game is pushing out its Monuments of Triumph seasonal content as a final goodbye to its players. Nearly all of the content is available to all players, even if they do not own any paid expansions.