The final season of Destiny 2 is here, and it is being overshadowed by yet another huge marketing blunder on Bungie’s part. So, together, let’s discover how Destiny 2’s new seasonal bundles aren’t earning Bungie any good will.
Not long ago, Bungie laid off around 8% of their workforce, including the legendary composer Michael Salvatori. The news shocked the gaming industry and put a bad taste into many of Destiny 2’s current and would-be players. From that point on, Bungie needed to win us, the players, back—to earn our trust again where it’s been broken many times before.
Fast forward to the launch of Season of the Wish and two new bundles made their way to the Steam store. One bundle immediately angered the Destiny 2 community and gaming world as a whole. Dubbed The Destiny 2 Starter Pack, for 15 dollars you would get an Exotic ghost shell, Exotic ship, Exotic sparrow, 125,000 Glimmer, Enhancement Cores, Prisms, and an Enhancement Shard.
Worst of all, however, was the three Exotic weapons that Bungie put into this pack. The three guns were a solid mix of Primary, Secondary, and Heavy weapons that included the Traveller’s Chosen Exotic Sidearm, Ruinous Effigy Exotic Trace Rifle, and Sleeper Stimulant Exotic Fusion Rifle. While these Exotic guns aren’t notably meta (at the moment), this is a much more egregious form of paying for power that Bungie has only flirted with via expansion preorder Exotic weapons.
But beyond the paying to win, the biggest issue here is that Bungie was charging a whopping $15 dollars for easy access to guns you can get in game. Because for $15 a new player can, and rightfully should, buy a couple of the game’s earlier expansions to pad out the content they can grind for and get access to. For example, during a sale, a new player could currently pick up the Beyond Light and Witch Queen expansions for not much more than what the starter pack is asking for.
But no, Bungie put short-term profits ahead of long-term growth by trying to nickel and dime yet again. It’s like they still haven’t learned that over-monetizing can and will push new and old players away from your game. I read an article earlier today that said Destiny 2 is becoming more and more like Diablo Immortal, and I wanted to weep at how true that felt. If Bungie had made the starter pack free, then there would have been praise—that’s what Bungie needs to focus on.
And then you have the painfully pointless Season of the Wish Silver Bundle that basically sells you the $15 Silver pack and adds a forgettable Legendary Emote to it. How is that an enticing bundle? You get the same amount of Silver between both packs, when bundles could stand to be a lot more enticing and worth the money.
What makes these packs feel rather disingenuous is how they describe the amount of Silver they offer. The regular Silver pack says you get 1,500 Silver plus a 200 Bonus, while this new bundle says you get 1,000 Silver plus a 700 Bonus! That leads me to believe they worded it like that to make players think they are getting a better deal and that feels so dirty. It’s that kind of practice that makes me care even less about new content when the higher ups at Bungie haven’t seemed to learn anything from their mistakes this far into development.
