Bungie's surprise Destiny 2 divorce from Activision earlier this year left an impression among some fans that the biggest problem with the game up to that point was, in a word, Activision. The dramatic updates Bungie has made to the game since then, including to the Eververse Store monetization and the upcoming launch of the free New Light, have helped solidify that belief. In an interview with Eurogamer, however, communications director David "Deej" Dague said the split was not acrimonious, but simply the result of changing priorities.
"I think we need to dispel the notion Activision was some prohibitive overlord that wasn't letting us do awesome things. We launched this franchise with Activision, naturally and over the course of time we both decided we had different goals for what we wanted it to be, so we both went our separate ways," Dague said.
"It was amicable, and here we are making this game on our own, doing what we think we need to do to make it awesome."
The move to Steam, implementation of cross-save, the free-to-play version, and other big changes coming to Destiny 2 simply reflect changes in the industry, and Bungie's willingness to evolve along with it, Dague said.
"We will do whatever we think is best for the community and welcome new people in. Sometimes these are painful evolutions—when we were blending the Halo nation with the PlayStation nation, there were some of these moments where we had new people joining Bungie.net to join clans and ask questions. But I'm very sensitive to the fact the lifeblood of a community is the ability to bring in new faces to keep it fresh," he explained.
"We'd be talking to a core Destiny fan about what's new but for the person on the fence we had all these elaborate business considerations they had to jump through in order to get caught up with someone already playing. Now we're opening the door and saying, come on in, take a look around, if you like this place and want to make it your hobby, there's a community here who'll take you on new adventures."
Destiny 2 will move from Battle.net to Steam on October 1, but you'll need to sign up in advance to transfer your account, which you can do here. Cross save, which enables you to use one account across all platforms, is also now live.
