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One of the more persistent problems with Stadia is that, due to a relatively low amount of players versus established platforms like Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, its multiplayer games can sometimes feel a little empty. Destiny 2 will fix that problem sometime this fall … or right the hell now, because the developers accidentally turned on crossplay a little early.
Developer Bungie has been working on crossplay, allowing cooperative and competitive game sessions with players on Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Stadia, for some time. It was scheduled for the Season 15 update later this year, but yesterday many players suddenly found themselves alongside players on other platforms that, according to everything they knew, shouldn’t be in the same game session. It was a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi shooter miracle.
The developers have confirmed that, yes, crossplay was (and may still be) active for at least some players, and also it’s not supposed to be. They’ll turn it off later this week … but in a strangely complacent move, they don’t seem to be in a great rush to do so, and are encouraging players to have fun with the incomplete feature in the meantime. Bungie’s community manager had this to say:
We are seeing reports that some players are able to get a sneak peek at Crossplay.
This isn’t meant to be live yet and is not representative of the full experience. We will be implementing a fix to remove public access later this week, but in the meantime feel free to partake. https://t.co/CKOfg1Fpq6
— Cozmo (@Cozmo23) May 12, 2021
According to player reports, some are starting to see their friends on other platforms, like PC, Stadia, and NVIDIA GeForce Now (all fairly similar with access to mouse and keyboard controls). It’s unclear whether or not PC/streaming and console players are able to see each other yet.
In some basic testing between Stadia and GeForce Now, we were unable to replicate the crossplay bug. So it may or may not still be active.
After a false start, Destiny 2’s cross-play beta drops today
The Stadia team has released a fresh “This Week On Stadia” blog post today. It mentions that the Destiny 2 cross-play beta that accidentally went live two weeks ago is officially rolling out today on Stadia. This is a short beta that will run from May 25th to the 27th, so you’ll only have two days to check it out. This beta test is limited to a dedicated Vanguard Strike, so you won’t be able to cross-play with your friends through the entire game just yet, though it is good to know we are moving towards full cross-play support for Destiny 2 sometime soon.
