Destiny 2: The Final Shape Launch, LoL Esports Shake Up

Destiny 2 just dropped their biggest expansion in years bringing the long-running primary narrative to a close with The Final Shape. The Final Shape garnered over 1 million pre-orders and built a buzz around the game that we haven’t seen in a couple years. I was a huge fan of the original Destiny game, but put down Destiny 2 shortly after it released in 2017.

I didn’t touch the game again until 2020 when the Beyond Light expansion was released and the game experienced a major revamp, but again, it didn’t hold my interest for too long. Now, 4 years later, THEY PULLED ME BACK IN! The Final Shape’s pre-release buzz got to me, and I have been itching for a familiar shooter to mindlessly play during my late night gaming sessions. Bungie definitely succeeded in reigniting the dormant player base, but that win might have been more than they bargained for.

When the expansion dropped on June 4th, Destiny 2’s servers exploded. Players experienced a host of issues including the inability to log into the game, glitched and missing cutscenes, total progress loss, inability to play the main campaign, and being kicked out of a campaign level mid-playthrough. It was an absolute disaster that played out in front of Desinty 2’s biggest audience in years.

The issues were so bad that Bungie issued an apology the same day that The Final Shape was released.

The issues have improved now, but the fan base definitely voiced their opinions via review bombings, angry comments, and the other standard online toxicity. Luckily, I waited a week after launch and haven’t run into any issues with my playthrough, so if you are interested in The Final Shape, you are safe to play without any interruptions.

2025 will look very different for League of Legends esports fans, especially if you are a fan of the North American LCS. After years of declining viewership, org departures, and loss of sponsors, Riot Games’ global esports division has reorganized the LoL esports landscape by combining the LCS, CBLOL (Brazil’s league), and LLA (Latin America) into one new league separated into a North Conference and a South Conference.

This reorganized region will be known as the Americas region and will feature 8 teams in each conference. In the North conference, there will be 6 LCS team, 1 LLA team, and 1 guest slot that will be used as a way to bring in high performing lower league teams into the pro scene. South will the be same set up, but with 6 CBLOL teams in place of the LCS teams. This move effectively kills the Latin American region since only 2 of their 8 teams will remain, and significantly cuts down on CBLOL’s region as well, cutting it from 10 teams to 6.

LCS already experienced a team cut going from 10 to 8 in 2024, and will now cut down even further to 6 teams total. The move also effectively takes away 1 international slot from the LCS in both Worlds and MSI.

In addition to these changes, Riot has also combined all remaining minor regions into 1 major region. This new APAC region will feature 8 teams from the 7 major regions, which kills an additional 7 regions.

The final change affects the entire global ecosystem by moving everyone to a 3 split format to accommodate a 3rd international event earlier in the year. This may be the only change that isn’t painful for a large swath of the LoL pro scene. International tournaments always bring in increased viewership and growth opportunities for the players involved.

Overall, the newly minted Americas region is completely up in arms about these changes. Brazillian fans are angry at LCS and Riot for blowing up their league as they were starting to see strong regional success and growth, LCS fans are upset about losing teams and international representation, and Latin American fans have been totally nuked since only 2 of their teams survived the cuts.

While this seems like the beginning of the end for a Riot sponsored LoL pro scene, it is likely the best option they had given the decrease in revenue and sponsorship interest for the long standing esports league. The LCS summer split is starting this weekend, and it may be the last LCS split ever if there is a branding change when the merger happens.

Game Recommendation

My game recommendation for this week goes back to the start of this newsletter with Destiny 2! The game has always been a really solid FPS to play with tons of story and end game content to enjoy. While it is definitely more fun to play with friends, it can still be enjoyable as a solo player. If you’ve never played the game before, now is the perfect time to jump in.

Cheat Code

This week’s cheat code is for one of my favorite games when I was growing up with the original PlayStation, NFL Blitz!

The code for Infinite Turbo is Turbo Button (5x), Jump button (1x), Pass button (3x).