The next season of Destiny 2 is upon us, and as always, there are a lot of changes coming to the MMO shooter. Bungie has outlined a number of them in a new blog post, including increasing the price of Season Passes from $10 to $12. It’s a small amount in the scheme of things that nonetheless points to the increasing costs of both producing the game and playing it full-time.
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“As our teams continue to invest in developing compelling seasonal experiences for the year of Lightfall, we’d like to update you on a small increase in the price of the standalone Season Pass, starting with Season of the Deep,” wrote the studio’s blog post This Week at Bungie” on May 4th. “This will be the new Year of Lightfall Season Pass price for those looking to maximize their rewards with each new Season, and we will be evaluating new approaches to content after the release of The Final Shape.”
The Season Pass itself, which players purchase to unlock rank-up rewards as well as seasonal activities and other content, will increase from 1,000 in-game silver currency to 1,200. Paid rank-ups, meanwhile, will increase from 2,000 Silver for 10 to 2,200. This price change only applies to the purchase of season tickets à la carte. The ones that come with the Standard ($50) and Deluxe ($100) editions of the latest Lightfall expansion remain the same.
One thing worth noting right away is that there is no way to buy these new amounts of silver. The currency instead comes in specific bundles of 500 for $5, 1,100 for $10, 2,300 for $20, 3,500 for $30, and 6,000 for $50. At the new prices, it appears players will need to purchase at least $15 worth of silver (the 500 bundle plus the 1,100 bundle) to get the amount required for Season of the Deep unless they have existing silver lying around .
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In addition to paid expansions and seasons, Destiny 2 regularly adds new cosmetics to the microtransaction shop. Image: Bungie
The price increase comes as Lightfall increased the price of annual expansions to $50 (the previous ones, including Witch Queen, were all $40). Bungie has also spun off additional Destiny 2 dungeons into their own paid packs, and even legacy content still comes at a price. Content left over from Forsaken, much of which was removed from the game in 2022, still costs $20 despite being nearly five years old at this point. Beyond Light 2020 costs $30. If a new player wanted to jump into Destiny 2 today and have access to Lightfall and all of the legacy content, it would cost around $140.
At the same time, these changes are in line with broader video game price increases across the industry. The standard price for blockbuster games on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X is now $70, and even The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a Nintendo Switch game, will be that expensive. Even some indie games on Steam have announced price increases, giving players a chance to shop in before they take effect.
It might still be a difficult pill to swallow for some in the Destiny 2 community. The new $12 Season Pass comes as Destiny 2 faces an unusual number of bugs following the release of Lightfall. There has also been an exceptional amount of server downtime recently. It’s less uncommon than it used to be to log in on a random day of the week and be faced with error codes or unplanned maintenance while Bungie releases fixes.
However, the studio has announced that it is not expecting Destiny 3 any time soon. It’s more likely to announce one of the new projects it’s working on, as its owner Sony plans to release a number of more live service games in the years to come.
