Bungie announced that the Destiny 2 Shadowkeep expansion would be delayed a few weeks in order to make sure the quality is up to snuff, and it’s a major positive for Guardians who have been holding out hope that the game would turn things around after Bungie’s departure from Activision. The decision to break off from one of the biggest publishers in the gaming industry was met with equal parts excitement and skepticism over what was in store for Destiny 2, but months later, most doubt has been erased and the game’s future looks bright.
Since Bungie gained sole rights to Destiny, the game has undergone several transformative changes and has been better off for each of them. New content releases have been slower, but more deliberately influential on the game’s overall shape and scope, and have created some of the better seasonal moments within the game since its launch. Likewise, small tweaks and fixes to existing content have proven that Bungie has a keen eye for past content and wouldn’t simply leave it to rot in favor of whatever is newest. With the announcement of Destiny 2: New Light, a way to catch players back up on the game’s content for free, it appeared as though Bungie had everything figured out prior to Shadowkeep.
As it turns out, it wasn’t everything – Destiny 2 Shadowkeep will be delayed from September 17 to October 1. That two week delay was announced by Bungie earlier this week in what the developer referred to as a “hard decision” before acknowledging that the expansion needed a little bit more time in development and would benefit from it. The surprising thing is that Destiny 2 fans didn’t react to the delay with much beyond affirmative responses and assuages that they’d be patient while Bungie sorted out whatever needed to be done in Shadowkeep.
That’s obviously not the typical reaction from fans, but the Destiny 2 Shadowkeep delay is clear evidence that Bungie’s leadership of the game will be starkly different from Activision’s. The reason fans are reacting so positively to news of the most-hyped Destiny 2 expansion ever is because it’s a refreshing break from what they’d become accustomed to from Activision’s reign – expansions that, though they showed immense promise and executed some cool new features, felt universally rushed out the door to meet a deadline. Activision is notorious for the practice in all the games it publishes, and most major publishers are beginning to garner a similar reputation – one need look no further than Anthem‘s launch to see how rushed games can perform.
Perhaps with Anthem fresh in their minds and Bungie’s leadership still demonstrating net positives, Guardians are able to better understand the need for delays on content. Bungie is showing that it refuses to rush content out the door if it’s not ready, even if it means pushing back the launch of an expansion that Destiny 2 sorely needs. The company also added triple infamy and valor weeks to its September schedule to make up for the delay, proving it also doesn’t want to leave fans in the lurch in the interim.
Finally, Destiny 2 Shadowkeep being delayed also helps distance the expansion from the release of Borderlands 3, which could be the most-anticipated game of the fall season. Giving the expansion some breathing room could be nice, and could help tempt lapsed players back into the fold in a way that might not have been as appealing if Borderlands 3 had released just days prior.
Ultimately, though, it’s the fact that Bungie has decided to delay Destiny 2 Shadowkeep at the risk of public backlash that has caused none of that to happen. Commitment to the quality of Destiny 2 is something many players would argue wasn’t at the fore of the game’s decision making under Activision’s regime, so Bungie’s decision to focus on that will do little other than generate a more positive buzz for what will already be a massive expansion when it launches, now on October 1, 2019.
