By Dan Moren
October 6, 2015 7:10 AM PT
Destiny adds microtransactions for sweet dance moves
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
After a little more than a year, microtransactions are coming to Bungie’s Destiny, a space adventure game in which players roam the universe, fight back the encroaching Darkness, and dance, dance, dance the night away.
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.
It really was only a matter of time before Bungie took the opportunity to dip its toe into the microtransaction game, charging real world cash for in-game content. But, given the seeming inevitability of that decision, it seems so far as though the game developer’s chosen a smart way to go about it. Rather than gating content to those willing to spend a ton of money, all of the upgrades are cosmetic–emotes that your character can perform.1
(At launch, emotes were limited to just four: wave, point, sit, and the ever popular dance. If you shelled out some extra money when the most recent expansion, The Taken King, debuted, you could pick up some new class-specific dance emotes as well.)
That’s a smart move, because it doesn’t simply pave the way for people to pay their way through the game, speeding their progress by exchanging money for in-game resources, like those kids who always bought entire boxes of Magic: The Gathering cards–you know the ones. It just provides a “luxury” good–something people want but that doesn’t skew the game–for those who have the money.
The outstanding question is just how much your real world money will get you, which we’ll find out in the next week, but if it’s a couple bucks for a new dance move, you can bet my Guardian is ready to get down.
- I suppose if the company was really conniving, they could create a hidden door in the game that only opens when you do a specific dance in front of it. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]
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