Building up a character in Destiny can be a lot of work. Thankfully, all of that work will have some lasting value, as Bungie has confirmed your characters will be sticking around for the entirety of the shooter’s lifespan.

There’s nothing worse than dumping a metric ton of hours into a video game character only to return to square one whenever the next game comes down the pipeline. In most games, developers get around this reset by either having you play as a new character or triggering some ridiculous event that saps your toon of all of their power (Pretty much every God of War, for instance).

In Destiny loads of players have dumped hundreds of hours into the open-world shooter in order to get their character (or multiple characters) to the max level, beef up their best armor and fully upgrade their exotic weapons. The thought of scrapping all of that progress in the event of a new Destiny game isn’t all that appealing.

Consider yourself spared some heartache, then, as a recent interview between the development team and Games Radar has revealed that your Destiny characters are in it for the long haul.

Bungie originally stated that Destiny was built with a 10-year plan in mind. Whether or not that means 10 years of building off of the base game or an eventual full sequel (or two, or three) remains unclear, but at least we now know that our lovingly crafted avatars will be sticking around for the duration.

In the GamesRadar interview, Bungie’s Engineering Lead Luke Timmins said that the studio took its 10-year statement very seriously.

“It’s a long-term thing and with these adventures that we’re adding my contract to you—and any player—is that your Guardian will always be there,” Timmins said.

So similar to games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, the work you’re doing in Destiny right now will have an impact on your game for the next decade. No, you probably won’t be making any world-changing decisions since Destiny is built on a shared universe, but at least your decisions when it comes to building up your character will continue to carry over. That’s especially good news for folks playing on last-gen consoles, as it means their progress will follow them onto the PS4 and Xbox One if the series ever makes a full jump to current gen.

Destiny’s next expansion, The Taken King, is due out on Sept. 15 of this year. After that, rumors are circulating that another pair of smaller updates similar to The Dark Below and House of Wolves are on the agenda, but nothing is confirmed at this time.