As an online petition for Destiny 3 gains traction, reports suggest Bungie staff didn't know about the end of Destiny 2 until the public announcement

Last week's biggest shocker was the untimely death of Destiny 2, which will receive its last content update in early June before going into life support mode. Now, we're getting more details about how everything went down at Bungie and have learned fans are organising already to ask for Destiny 3.

The online petition, which is at over 218k signatures at the time of writing, is meant to show Sony and Bungie there's a huge interest in a follow-up to Destiny 2 that could also be a fresh restart for the franchise. "Sign the petition to show your support for Destiny 3 and help us bring our love for this series to the next level."

Meanwhile, Forbes has shared a breakdown of what happened in the lead-up to the news, using its own sources. Apparently, the decision to drop Destiny 2 and focus on Marathon instead - a game that's still trying to find its footing despite a solid launch - was made earlier this year. That said, work on future Destiny 2 content, such as the Shattered Cycle expansion, continued at Bungie.

"This was because the vast majority of Bungie did not know about Destiny 2 support being dropped right up until it was publicly announced," Forbes' report stated. While "there were certain teams within Bungie that did know what was coming", most of the staff didn't. Some internal push happened to get leadership to share the decision with more people, but plans didn't change.

As for the reported layoffs set to hit the studio, Forbes' article said the "exact scope and timing" are unknown, but they're "significant" as both Sony and Bungie rally around Marathon's future, which includes "PvE and PvP-lite modes", among other improvements and content plans.

No decisions have been made yet about what's coming next from the studio, but Forbes made sure to underline "Sony has been wary of committing to" expensive undertakings like another MMO as it pivots away from live-service games. That sounds like bad news for anyone hoping to see Destiny 3 in the future, but it's likely that buzz around the tentative project won't quiet down easily.