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In the wake of the very successful launch of The Final Shape in Destiny 2, one of the key leaders who helped make it happen has just announced that he is leaving the company. This will be expansion project manager Catarina Macedo, a frequent guest star in videos and a driving force behind The Final Shape’s quality.

She says she’s taking some time before moving somewhere undisclosed, but she’s building something completely new, which shows she’s not headed to work on some existing franchise. We don’t know if it remains under the Sony umbrella.

It might be too early to announce a new expansion leader, but the question is… will there be one? And the bigger question that fans have had for a long time is, will Destiny 2 continue to get real expansions like it has for the past seven years?

Bungie previously said that they will be talking about the future of Destiny 2 after The Final Shape launches. And they did, but they only really covered the next three “episodes,” ending with a tease of something called Destiny: Frontiers, which doesn’t sound like an expansion, but more like a whole new arc with a theory that Destiny players will leave your current solar system. It’s night that include extensions?

There are some theories that Destiny will switch to an episode-only model for a while, which is more or less the equivalent of stretched out seasons and no major expansion in between.

Even so with all this uncertain and the lack of confirmation of new episodes. Even after Katarina’s departure, I’m still not convinced that will happen. Why? It’s pretty basic.

Money.

Most of the money Bungie brings in, now going directly to new owner Sony, is from selling its annual expansion or a bundle of that expansion with its subsequent seasons for around $100. Or past expansions as new or dropped players try to catch up.

Yes, Destiny 2 has microtransactions, yes you can buy seasons, but the big drivers of both revenue and keeping a player base that spends money on other things are these expansions. Losing that would be huge and would mean less money to spend on content production, which would mean less opportunities for engagement and spending etc. While yes, Bungie is offering Marathon as a new game, it’s a big, big risk in the current multiplayer landscape where everyone has been stuck playing Fortnite and Warzone and Apex for the past few years, not giving many newcomers a chance. Bungie needs Destiny to continue, and a future without an expansion seems almost impossible to imagine.

I’ve heard other theories that it’s to scale back and work on Destiny 3. Just make episodes for two years and release Destiny 3 in 2026 or something. This timeline is simply impossible to continue producing live content while working on a full scale sequel coming out so soon. I believe a Destiny sequel will come out someday, but not before the next console generation, and it can’t be beyond a concept phase right now. A game of this size would most likely take 4-5 years to make, which is why I don’t think it will come out until the PS6 and Xbox Whatever come out. But we’ll see.

I think Destiny 2 needs expansions, but so much is changing there it’s hard to know where things are going. Before Katarina left, game director Joe Blackburn left as well. Meanwhile, more controversial leaders such as the rarely seen Pete Parsons, Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy remain. I think Bungie needs to start being more specific about what comes after the codenames, as the current episode format alone can quickly start losing players.

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