Destiny Is Getting Microtransactions

Bungie to let you spend real money on dance emotes from this month.

Destiny will soon feature microtransactions, Bungie has announced.

In an update over on Bungie.net, the developer said that microtransactions will initially be limited to purchasing new dance emotes for your character, but stopped short of revealing how expensive they will be or even showing the emotes themselves.

On October 13th, a new storefront will be added that sells emotes for virtual currency purchased with real money. Bungie stresses that the items for sale will be purely cosmetic, and won’t effect gameplay balance in any way.

Here’s what Bungie had to say about the move:

This coming Tuesday, October 13th, Tess Everis will return to The Tower with a new look, a new storefront, and some new items to sell, courtesy of Eververse Trading Company. Initially, Tess will offer eighteen brand new emotes. Like the trio of emotes offered via The Taken King Collector’s Edition, these emotes are completely optional, and won’t impact the action game in any way.
To acquire these items, you’ll first need to pick up some “Silver,” a new in-game currency that will be available for purchase through the store associated with your console. Images and descriptions for each available emote, along with pricing information for Silver will be made available Tuesday, October 13th, alongside the launch of the in-game storefront right here on Bungie.net as soon as the content is live.
If you’re not interested in what Tess has to offer, you won’t ever be forced to pluck an item off of her shelf. You’ll still receive updates to the game, and you won’t lose a Crucible encounter or fail to clear a Raid because you didn’t have the right Eververse Trading Company emote equipped.
Our plan is to use these new items to bolster the service provided by our live team for another full year, as they grow and create more robust and engaging events that we’ll announce later this year. It has been, and continues to be, our goal to deliver updates to the game. Going forward, our live team is also looking to grow beyond vital updates and improvements to focus on world events, experiences, and feature requests.
Reading between the lines, Bungie’s use of the word “initially” to describe the goods on offer suggests that the developer has future plans to sell other items for real money in the future. The most likely candidates - assuming that the developer sticks to offering purely cosmetic items - would be additional ship and Ghost designs, along with new weapon and armor skins.
There was no news on whether Destiny’s second year will include premium expansions, similar to how the developer released The Dark Below and House of Wolves, though it looks like Bungie is taking a different route this time around. There’s no season pass for year two for starters, and yesterday Kotaku reported that Bungie intends to release additional story missions and strikes as free updates to the game, ahead of the release of Destiny 2 late next year - though it’s worth noting that the report didn’t come from Destiny’s publisher, Activision.
Kyle Barrows reviewed Destiny for Continue Play, and came away from the whole thing with lukewarm feelings. “Bungie built an amazing and unique universe for us to explore, but filled it with the most uninspired and standard content possible,” Kyle wrote in his Destiny review. “Everything beyond the aesthetics and mechanics is boring. Nothing is new. It doesn’t even separate itself from Halo. I dare someone to tell me that the Hive are not the Flood. I mean, c’mon.
“It’s a shame. If Bungie could have delivered on even half the promises it made, Destiny could have been something great. Instead, we are left with the skeleton of good game – and not much more.”
Dale Morgan

Dale Morgan

Founder, Editor in Chief
When Dale isn't crying over his keyboard about his never-ending workload, he's playing games - lots of them. Dale has a particular love for RPGs, Roguelikes and Metroidvanias.
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