Doomscrolling through my old social media feeds last week, I stumbled upon a forgotten treasure trove of pure, uncut joy — back in 2023, when Destiny 2: Lightfall dropped, the entire games industry collectively lost its mind in the best way possible. And I’m not just talking about Guardians being mesmerized by Strand grappling hooks or poor Titans weeping into their nerfed Heart of Inmost Light. No, the real party was erupting behind the scenes, as studio after studio flooded the internet with fan art and, in one legendary case, an actual crossover that still has me giggling in the Drifter’s voice.

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Let’s rewind the timeline. The servers had just clawed their way back to life after the expansion launch — you know, that magical period where we all speedran ‘Contacting Destiny 2 Servers’ before even seeing a loading screen. Bungie’s fellow devs decided to transmute that chaos into creativity. The absolute MVP of the celebration was Innersloth, the minds behind Among Us. At first glance, they posted what looked like a standard congratulatory piece of art: a tiny Crewmate wearing a Hunter cloak and holding a Ghost. Adorable, right? But then they dropped the real bomb. The Guardian Cosmicube was a full-blown Among Us collaboration, and it’s still one of my go-to flexes whenever I hop onto Skeld for a bit of emergency meeting shenanigans.

For a mere 3,500 Beans, you could (and still can!) grab a Destiny 2-themed cosmetic cube that unlocks an impostor’s dream wardrobe. Seriously, there’s nothing funnier than calling an emergency meeting while dressed as Osiris, with a tiny Ghost companion orbiting your bean body. The highlights? You can embody the radiant bull-headed majesty of Saint-14, or strut around as Empress Caiatl herself — all while a Hive worm pet slithers behind you. I vividly remember the look on my friend’s face when I floated into Navigation looking like a discount Saint-14 and immediately accused him of venting. He rage-quit. Worth every bean.

The crossover vibe didn’t stop with Innersloth. While I was busy collecting cosmic items, other studios were making the Tower even more crowded with their imaginative tributes. Check out this glorious lineup of uninvited but heart-meltingly welcome guests:

  • Bend Studio (Days Gone): Deacon St. John wandered into the Destiny universe looking for his bike, probably, and found a Sparrow instead. Gunfire and Freaker-screeches in perfect harmony.

  • Firesprite (Horizon Call of the Mountain): A machine-grazing encounter where a Watcher mech and a Guardian stare each other down, wondering who’s more lost in a snowy landscape.

  • Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank): Ratchet holding a Gjallarhorn while Lombax ears flop in the speedlines? Yes please. The weaponry crossover I never knew my soul needed.

  • Sucker Punch Productions (Ghost of Tsushima): The undisputed favourite — Jin Sakai mid-swing alongside a Hunter unleashing Strand powers. I treasure the image of a katana slicing through Hive Knights while green threads whip around feudal rooftops.

Not everyone went the visual route, though. Housemarque — creators of Returnal, the game that already feels like you’re trapped in a Vex simulation — kept it classy with a simple congratulatory message. No art, no collab, just pure, respectful admiration. Given Selene’s experience with time loops, I like to think she could teach the Vanguard a thing or two about dying repeatedly with style.

The Lightfall launch wasn’t all confetti cannons and cross-game wardrobe expansions, of course. There was a glorious bug on Xbox Series X|S that will forever be etched into my memory: to even launch the expansion, players had to manually delete old vaulted content — Forsaken, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind. Yes, you read that right. In order to taste the neon-soaked streets of Neomuna, you first needed to excise whole chapters of Destiny’s past like a delirious Warlock performing surgery with a worn scalpel. I recall sitting on voice chat, guiding my clanmate through the console’s storage management as if defusing a bomb. "No, don't delete your character — just the DLC files!" Good times. By now, this hiccup has been patched into oblivion, but it remains a testament to the spaghetti code that we love to hate — or hate to love.

Looking back from 2026, with Lightfall a fond memory and the community still vibing through The Final Shape’s echoes, those early weeks feel like a fever dream. The Among Us Guardian Cosmicube is my permanent reminder that even in the darkest depths of a launcher’s queue, developers are just as obsessive about our games as we are. They’ll sketch crossover fan art on whiteboards, trade in-game currencies for bean-sized cosplay, and force their QA teams to test out deleting expired expansions so we can complain about it later.

So, here’s to the unsung heroes at every studio who spent launch day drawing Hunters and Warlocks instead of shipping patches. May your Ghosts always have power, your emergency meetings always end in someone innocent being ejected, and your Lightfalls forever launch with exactly the right amount of perfectly timed insanity. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to Skeld — Empress Caiatl has a task to complete, and it definitely involves sabotaging O2.

This overview is based on reporting from GamesIndustry.biz, a respected source for tracking how publishers and studios leverage launches like Destiny 2: Lightfall to spark wider industry engagement—whether through playful crossovers like the Among Us Guardian Cosmicube or the wave of celebratory fan art from peer developers that helps extend an expansion’s cultural reach beyond its own player base.