Destiny 2: Shadowkeep
Project: ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ - a major expansion marking Bungie’s transition to full self-publishing and the beginning of ‘Destiny 2’s modern live-service era. ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ reintroduced the “Moon” destination, added the “Nightmare” enemy variant, expanded “Armor 2.0” buildcrafting systems, introduced cross-save functionality, and launched alongside sweeping systemic changes to progression, economy, and a new seasonal model.
Final Role / Title: Quality Assurance Engineer (contract) - supported pre-release QA sign-off for ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ and its associated seasonal content, partnering with cross-functional feature teams to validate new gameplay systems, UI/UX updates, backend service integrations, and live-service functionality across multiple simultaneous release branches. Contributed to hotfix validation, seasonal update testing, and ongoing support as ‘Destiny 2’ entered its new self-published, expansion-plus-seasonal cadence.
What is Destiny 2: Shadowkeep?
‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ is a major content expansion released in 2019 for ‘Destiny 2’, a first-person shooter game developed by Bungie. ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ focused on the return of Eris Morn, a recurring character within the ‘Destiny’ universe that had been absent since the events of ‘Destiny 2's original campaign. Eris returns seeking the aid of the player-aligned Vanguard in defeating a scourge of "Nightmares" that she has released into the Solar System, taking the player’s in-game Guardian back to the Moon for the first time since the original ‘Destiny’ campaign.
Key features of ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ include:
New ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep‘ Story Mode Campaign
New World: ‘The Moon’
New Enemy Type: ‘Nightmares’
New Raid: ‘Garden of Salvation‘
New Dungeon: ‘Pit of Heresy‘
2 New Multiplayer Strike Missions
1 New & 2 Returning Crucible Maps
Role & Responsibilities
Supported the launch of ‘Destiny 2’s first fully self-published expansion, validating major UI/UX updates, new player-facing flows, and systemic changes introduced with ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ and its accompanying seasonal content.
Co-owned testing and validation for core gameplay systems and backend-driven functionality, including “Armor 2.0” buildcrafting, cross‑save integration, progression updates, and economy refactors that reshaped ‘Destiny 2’s long-term live-service foundation.
Designed and executed complex validation plans across multiple simultaneous release branches, contributing heavily to bug filing, triage, prioritization, and cross-discipline tracking throughout the expansion’s development and launch cycle.
Coordinated feature-specific and cross-team playtests to evaluate in-progress builds, identify systemic risks, and provide actionable feedback to designers, engineers, and producers working on new activities, destinations, and seasonal systems.
Partnered with platform teams (Xbox, PlayStation) to support certification and distribution requirements for ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ and its associated updates, ensuring timely approval and deployment across all storefronts during a high-visibility launch.
Actively participated in daily stand‑ups, sprint planning, milestone reviews, and post‑mortems, providing QA insight that informed prioritization, risk assessment, and cross‑team alignment as Bungie transitioned ‘Destiny 2’ into its new expansion-plus-seasonal cadence.
Challenges, Learnings, & Career Impact
My work on ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkee'p’ began while Bungie was simultaneously closing out the ‘Destiny 2: Forsaken Annual Pass’ and preparing the free-to-play transition with ‘Destiny 2: New Light’. Supporting all three initiatives at once created one of the most demanding periods of my time at Bungie. Each release had its own priorities, dependencies, and technical constraints, and keeping expectations aligned across teams required constant communication, rapid context-switching, and a strong understanding of how changes in one branch could impact another.
As ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ moved closer to launch, it naturally became the studio’s highest-visibility priority. The expansion introduced sweeping systemic changes - “Armor 2.0”, cross-save, progression refactors, economy updates - and required significantly more validation than a typical seasonal release. Balancing this increased workload while still maintaining quality across ongoing live-service updates pushed me to refine my ability to triage effectively, escalate risks early, and support multiple teams without losing sight of the broader product goals.
Being more deeply embedded in ‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ than I had been in ‘Destiny 2: Forsaken’ gave me a rare end-to-end view of how a major live-service expansion is built. I gained firsthand experience navigating large-scale systemic overhauls, coordinating across distributed feature teams, and supporting a high stakes launch during Bungie’s transition to self-publishing. These challenges strengthened my ability to bring clarity to ambiguity, maintain alignment across parallel development tracks, and uphold a high quality bar even under intense timelines.
Where to get Destiny 2: Shadowkeep
‘Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’ was originally released to all major digital video game retailers in October 2019 (current availability may vary).
