Destiny 2 Going Free-to-Play, Moving to Steam with Shadowkeep Release

Once Shadowkeep launches in September, players will no longer have to pay for their first taste of Destiny 2. The game’s early content will be going free-to-play, while later expansions will still be separate purchases.

One announcement from today’s Destiny 2 livestream will be particularly interesting to those who somehow still haven’t played the game, or who have fallen behind on content. With the release of the next expansion, Shadowkeep, on September 17, the base game and all content from the first year will go free-to-play. The PC version of the game will also move from Battle.net to Steam.

The free-to-play news is obviously the bigger deal here. Destiny 2 and its first two expansions will go free-to-play and relaunch as Destiny 2: New Light. That means that you’ll have access to Destiny 2, plus the Curse of Osiris and Warmind expansions free on any platform. If you want to play beyond the content of those expansions, though, you’ll still have to pay for it. Destiny 2 has had plenty of content past Warmind, so the free-to-play version won’t get you up to speed with Shadowkeep, but it will give you dozens of hours to play through and decide if you want to stick with it going forward.

A lot of MMO’s, including the behemoth World of Warcraft, have followed similar models. In the livestream, Destiny 2’s directors said that they wanted the game to lean more into its MMO side, a term they’ve typically avoided. Describing Destiny 2’s future as an “evolving world,” they seemed to cut off the speculation that Destiny 3 would be launching any time soon to focus more on Destiny 2 as a growing platform.