Crossplay is coming to Destiny 2 in the coming weeks, and Bungie has revealed how the system will work at launch.
When crossplay is switched on you’ll finally be able to play with other Guardians across every different Destiny 2 platform, be they on Xbox Series X, PC, PlayStation 5, or Stadia. Thankfully, Bungie’s implementation of crossplay seems fairly simple, but we’re here to run you through everything you need to know to make sure you’re ready for when it goes live.
Note that some features won’t work perfectly right away. For one, voice chat across platforms won’t be active when the service goes live. Bungie is working on fixes for this and other issues and promises that voice chat should be turned on “shortly” after the full crossplay system is.
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Crossplay release date
We don’t yet have an exact date for when crossplay will come to Destiny 2. Instead, Bungie has told players that the feature will launch “early” in the game’s Season 15, which will likely begin on August 24.
Given that Seasons in Destiny 2 last for several months, ‘early’ could still mean we won’t see crossplay until September or even October roll around – we’ll just have to wait and see.
Making a name for yourself
If you want to make sure you aren’t stuck with an embarrassing username, this is the section you need to read. When Destiny’s crossplay service launches you won’t be able to change your Bungie Name, meaning that whatever you start with will be what you’re stuck with for a while.
Your Bungie Name is set based on the first platform you use in Season 15. If your PC and console usernames are identical then you shouldn’t have any issues, but if they’re different make sure you first log into Season 15 on your preferred account.
Your Bungie Name will then look a lot like a Discord username, i.e. your display name followed by a ‘#’ and a string of four random numbers. Names will be filtered during this process to remove offensive terms and characters that can’t be typed out on traditional keyboards (such as Steam-exclusive emojis).
Adding friends
If you want to play with friends that are on your platform, or have already been added to your Bungie Friends list, Fireteam invites can be issued through the Roster screen in Destiny 2.
To invite new friends from different platforms, you’ll first need to log into Bungie.net and use the friends finder. This is where you’ll be able to link your different platforms and add friends to your collective Bungie Friends list.
The friends finder isn’t live yet, but when crossplay is turned on head to: www.bungie.net/friends to start creating your friends list.
Matchmaking rules
Whether you’re teaming up with friends or randoms, it’s important to know how matchmaking will work. For PVE modes Bungie says there will be just “one global matchmaking pool”, no matter what platform you’re on you’ll be matched with people on any hardware.
PVP matchmaking (that’s for the Crucible, Iron Banner, Trials, and Gambit gamemodes) gets a little more complex though.
- PC players will match with other PC players
- Console and Stadia players will match with other console and Stadia players
- Fireteams with any combination of PC players and console players will match in the PC player pool
That last instance means that if you’ve teamed up with friends from multiple platforms you’ll all be playing against keyboard-and-mouse players on PC, so this might be something to watch out for if you’re used to competing against players using controllers.
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