I want to address the ridiculous scenario we find ourselves in regarding Destiny 2 and the Blizzard to Steam migration and how you can copy your existing files to save yourself a lot of time.

Guide

For those of you that just want to save yourself from downloading 50GB, here’s the guide.

Prerequisites:

• Obviously you need Destiny 2 installed. If you’ve clicked “Uninstall” in the Blizzard client you might want to try a data recovery tool such as Recuva to retrieve the files.
• You’ll need enough free space (roughly 80GB free) on the drive you wish to install the Steam version of Destiny. Note that if you’re running low on space on your preferred drive you can always install it to another drive or external drive and then move it later.
• If you’ve already started the download in Steam and you have a long time to go you’ll need to cancel the download and delete all the files from the Destiny 2 Steam directory including the manifests file!

Step 1.

Move the Destiny 2 folder to the appropriate Steam directory. In my case this was E:\Blizzard\Destiny 2\ and I moved it to E:\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Destiny 2\

Step 2.

Find Destiny 2 in the Steam store and click on Play to start the download and installation. Make sure you point it to the correct drive.

Step 3.

If you’ve done this correctly you should see a dialogue box that says “Discovering Existing Files”. If you see this message it means it is working. Give it some time to verify all the files.

Step 4.

Once files have finished validating it should continue as normal. You’ll have roughly 50GB of the game ready and you’ll only need to download the remaining files from the new expansion pack and a few Steam specific files for the original game.

This can be easily be done in under a minute and save you potentially hours or even DAYS depending on your internet connect. In my case I probably saved about 20 hours of downloading on ADSL2 as well as saving 50GB of my data cap.

Is this the new norm?

For whatever reason Blizzards launcher has become some sort of weird testing ground for Activision who don’t seem to know what the hell they’re doing with it. Is this still Blizzards launcher or is it now Activision’s launcher? They can’t seem to make up their mind. When Destiny 2 came out the powers-that-be decided using Blizzards launcher was the right move. Fast forward a couple of years and Bungie has split from Activision and they’re taking Destiny 2 with them.

So now we find ourselves in the ridiculous predicament of having to migrate our game progress and the game itself to a different client. I believe this is probably the first time this has ever happened in gaming history. Yes, when Steam was first launched people had to get used to the idea of a game launcher in order to play Counter Strike, etc, but that was moving from discs and CD keys to a launcher.

I thought the entire point of a launcher was supposed to be convenient for the player but at this point I’d rather just have my game CD and serial code ready to enter like this was 1998.

Of course, some people aren’t happy about having to move to a new client, especially those with slow internet, lack of technical knowledge or small data caps. Games these days have ballooned in size and Destiny 2 is not a small game by any means totalling about 79GB after the latest expansion.

As you can imagine, some Destiny 2 players pondered if they could somehow move their Destiny 2 files from Blizzard to Steam to avoid downloading the entire game again which could take many days for some players or cause them to exceed their ISP’s data cap.

Well, imagine my surprise when the game developers told the community that NO – it could not be done.

This is of course – Complete fucking bullshit, to put it politely.

Let’s look at this with some common sense… I’m supposed to believe that NOT A SINGLE FILE from Destiny 2 can be salvaged in order to move it from Blizzard to Steam… In a 79GB game?

So, I put it to the test. I moved my entire Destiny 2 folder from my Blizzard directory, shoved it in my Steam directory and hit the Play button on Steam’s Destiny 2 store page… Well, what do you know… “Discovering existing files”. After waiting about 10 minutes (This is installed on a mechanical HDD, not an SSD) Steam discovered over 50GB of existing Destiny 2 files and instead of downloading the entire 79GB game again I only had 24GB to download – Cutting my download time by 1/3 which in my case probably saves about 20 hours on my ADSL2 connection as well as 50GB of my data cap. The process of migrating the files to Steam takes about 30 seconds and only took me longer due to having a full HDD.

My experiment is yet another example of just how out of touch game developers are. They all live in their bubbles and believe everyone is as fortunate as they are in regards to fibre internet and unlimited data caps. “Oh, just download the entire game again, it’ll only take 30 minutes, right?”

It would have taken no effort at all to make a tool to move the game from one directory to another. Hell, even just a guide with some screenshots would have been acceptable.

Instead, they straight up LIE to the community. Many people in the gaming community are aware of how to transfer files between game clients and other computers. Bungie didn’t bother researching this because they simply don’t care. To them, if you have to spend 2-3 days downloading a game and exceed your data cap that’s not their problem despite the fact it was Bungie that caused this train wreck in the first place.

While this is the first time gamers have had to migrate their games to a new client, with the new player Epic on the block throwing around their weight and buying up exclusives, I doubt it will be the last.