After weeks of radio silence regarding the state of Destiny 2, Bungie announced that it is pushing back the next major update, Shadow and Order.
On Feb. 18, the official Destiny 2 X account stated that Shadow and Order is undergoing significant revisions and will be delayed until June 9, 2026. This results in a three-month delay from its original release date, Mar. 3. The post added that the update is being expanded to include sizable quality-of-life updates and will also be renamed.
One of the revealed additions in Shadow and Order is the introduction of gear Tiers to all raid and dungeon activities. This means there will be a reason for you to revisit some of the best content in the game, which became mostly irrelevant with the release of The Edge of Fate.
Bungie also confirmed Pantheon 2.0. Pantheon was a popular raid boss rush activity during the Into the Light update, where you complete encounters from different raids back to back and earn endgame loot. Encounters had slight tweaks to the mechanics, adding a new layer of challenge for those who enjoy raids.
The rest of the additions include previously announced weapon Tier upgrading, Tier 5 stats for Exotic armor, and more. More details regarding the update and plans for Destiny 2 are coming closer to launch. In the meantime, you can expect continued modifiers in the Portal, Guardian Games event in March, and the return of Iron Banner in April.
Unfortunately, these additions might be too late, as the player numbers are rapidly dwindling. With little to nothing to do in the game and Bungie’s attention focused primarily on Marathon, Destiny 2 is reaching record low player numbers – averaging 14,000 peak daily concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB.
Farming Vault of Glass for the third time and fighting old raid bosses in Pantheon may simply not be enough for players to come back unless Shadow and Order features meaningful new content. What’s worse is that many remaining players are likely in a situation where a lot of their clanmates and friends don’t play the game anymore, which means looking for new people to play with or suffering through LFG just to play old content.
