Destiny 2 Goes Free To Play, Announces New Expansion, Cross Save and Platforms

June 7, 2019

Written by Jamie Galea

It’s been a hell of a year for Destiny 2 developer Bungie. Aside from facing its biggest competitor yet in the form of Ubisoft’s The Division 2, the developer announced back in January that they were splitting from publisher Activision after eight years and taking Destiny with them. We haven’t heard much of what Bungie plans to do with Destiny as an independent publisher/developer since then, but after a detailed livestream today, the company has revealed some massive changes to the way Destiny 2 operates. And that’s on top of also announcing a brand new expansion pack for later this year!

To begin with, September 17th (or September 18th for Australians) will mark a red letter day for Destiny 2, as several massive changes and additions are happening to the game. Firstly, it marks the release of the next Destiny 2 expansion! Titled Shadowkeep, it’ll see players returning to the Moon as new horrors have been discovered and battle something truly horrific. You’ll be able to dive into this expansion without having owned any of the previous expansions (unlike the critically lauded Forsaken), and you can go pre-order it right now on your platform of choice!

That one day in September will also see Destiny 2 going free to play across all platforms and rebranded as Destiny 2: New Light. What comes in this edition is pretty substantial – the Destiny 2 base game, the Mark of Osiris & Warmind expansions, access to the Crucible and Gambit modes and access to the patrol areas from the Forsaken and Shadowkeep expansions. Speaking of access across all platforms, Destiny 2 will be coming to Google Stadia and be a major part of their Stadia Pro package, as one of the offerings for being a subscriber is the complete Destiny 2 experience. If you’re looking to make the move to Stadia, Bungie has also announced that Cross Save functionality will be coming to Destiny 2, and will support all platforms. This also includes the Playstation 4, which will no longer see any exclusive content, with all previous exclusive strikes and weaponary be made available across all platforms. Bungie also made it clear that while expansion purchases won’t work across platforms, purchased Eververse content (including silver) and seasonal content will transfer over.

Finally, as Shadowkeep is being released, it will also mark Destiny 2’s PC release transitioning from the Activision owned Battle.net platform and onto Steam. Bungie explained that in this instance, all purchased content (including expansions) will transfer over, but wasn’t able to offer any details as to how it’ll work this time. The game, plus the Shadowkeep expansion, is also avaialble to purchase on Steam right now.

2019 has been a massive year for Destiny 2, and it’s going to be fascinating to see what else the future holds for the game.