Just someday after the launch of Season of the Wish, Bungie has eliminated a $15 “starter pack” microtransaction for Destiny 2 that rapidly turned the topic of criticism and backlash over pay-to-win considerations.
Over the years, Bungie’s monetization mannequin for his or her long-running live-service shooter has more and more relied on DLC and quite a few microtransaction channels to help its recreation, however when gamers seen a brand new “starter pack” added to the shop yesterday, many voiced concern that the corporate had gone too far.
How is that this microtransaction completely different from the quite a few paid choices of years previous? Well, importantly, it incorporates highly effective weapons and in-game supplies that may take hours of playtime to earn usually, and whereas Destiny has flirted with pay-to-win parts up to now, this was the primary time they’d very clearly gone past beauty and time-saving mechanics into the world of pay-to-win.
Among the involved voices was well-liked Destiny content material creator Datto, who reserved a piece of his latest YouTube video to put into the microtransaction providing, asking “How way more tone deaf are you able to presumably get?”
“How way more tone deaf are you able to presumably get?”
One of the methods gamers expressed their disdain for this pay-to-win bundle was by taking to the Steam storefront with on-line critiques, and marking the merchandise with person tags together with, “Capitalism,” “Crime,” and “Psychological Horror.” The itemizing has since been eliminated.
The controversy comes at a troubling time for Bungie, after an underwhelming enlargement earlier this 12 months and poor participant engagement main as much as the Destiny saga’s finale. So a lot so, in actual fact, that Bungie cited decrease than anticipated income when it laid off 8% of its workers final month.
As considerations grew louder within the day for the reason that starter pack debuted, Bungie quietly eliminated the merchandise from their retailer in an obvious admission that these considerations had been legitimate. IGN reached out to a Bungie consultant who declined to touch upon the matter.
Travis Northup is a author for IGN. You can observe him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and browse his video games protection right here.
