Former Destiny 2 community manager Liana Ruppert says Destiny 2: Lightfall once had a “glorious” original version before it was “completely cut.”
Destiny 2 has had one of the roughest weeks in the franchise’s history. Yesterday, Bungie announced that the game’s final live-service content update, Monument of Triumph, will launch on June 9, 2026, marking the end of active development for Destiny 2 after nearly a decade.
The game will remain playable, but Destiny 2’s long-running live-service era is coming to an end. Still, for many fans, this news has brought back a bigger conversation about where things started to go wrong. A lot of players point to Lightfall as the moment Destiny 2’s momentum truly began to fall apart.
The expansion was heavily criticized at launch, especially for its story, tone, and the way it handled major plot points after years of build-up, and for being a penultimate expansion in the saga. Lightfall also reportedly failed to meet Bungie’s financial expectations, and later in 2023, the studio went through its first major round of layoffs.
Since then, Destiny 2 has struggled to fully recover, even with the strong reception to The Final Shape. Now, a new comment from a former Bungie developer has added another layer to that conversation, especially around what Lightfall may have looked like before release.
Former Bungie Community Manager Claims Original Destiny 2 Lightfall Expansion Was “Glorious”
Former Bungie community manager Liana Ruppert, who was among those impacted by Bungie’s 2023 round of layoffs, took to X today to talk about Bungie and some of the decisions made during Destiny 2’s later years.
In one exchange, a user asked whether the Destiny Content Vault and the removal of content were also driven by “malicious intent” from leadership. Ruppert replied that some of it came down to tech limits, but then made a much stronger claim about Lightfall and other choices.
“Some of that was tech limitation, but Lightfall and other decisions like that were intentional either way, with intentionally cut resources, gaslighting, and isolating those that spoke out. Y’all should have seen the original iteration of Lightfall. It was glorious,” Ruppert said.
Another user then asked whether that content ended up in The Final Shape or was cut completely.
Ruppert responded: “Completely cut.”
That is a big claim, especially because Lightfall has long been viewed by many players as an expansion that felt incomplete. Ruppert’s comment does not confirm what the original version included, and she did not go into detail about what was changed, removed, or planned before release.
This is also not the first time Ruppert has talked about ideas inside Bungie that never made it into Destiny 2. Back in January 2025, she said that “so many devs” at the studio wanted a player housing system for the game, calling it “the dream,” while also noting that it would have needed major internal resource changes to make sense for Bungie.
As for the future of Destiny, things remain unclear. Reports have claimed that Destiny 3 is not in active development, with Bungie shifting focus toward other projects, including Marathon, while also facing more reported layoffs after the end of Destiny 2’s live service development.
For now, Destiny 2 is heading into its final major update, and fans are left wondering what the franchise could have become if some key decisions had gone differently.
What do you think about Ruppert’s comments? Do you believe Lightfall could have changed Destiny 2’s future if its original version had made it to players? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Don't miss the big stories. Make us your preferred source on Google to get breaking news, leaks, and exclusives first.
