There’s a lot of discontent and annoyance within the Destiny community, as I wrote about yesterday, and it feels as if that might continue for a while longer, as the first of two weekly updates looked to tackle some of the fallout from Luke Smith’s interview with Eurogamer.
He wrote:
Reading my interview with Eurogamer and imagining it came from some random developer of a game I love – that random developer looks like an Asshat.
But that Asshat was me – and those words rightfully anger you.
I’m sorry.
My words made it sound as if Bungie doesn’t care about their most loyal fans.
We do care. We are listening. And we will make it right.
At this moment in time, what this means is that you get more buying option made available to you. If you want them, but don’t want to spend $80 for the Digital Collector’s Edition that includes a copy of the base game and expansion content that you already own, you will now be able to purchase the set of three shaders, three class items with XP bonuses and three new emotes separately for the price of $20 (SRP).
Simply put, it’s the difference in price between the physical Legendary Edition, which includes Destiny and all three expansions, and the Digital Collector’s Edition. Predictably, there was no discussion of prices in other currencies.
They also showed an image of the shader, Sparrow and emblem which was previously announced would be exclusive to year one players buying The Taken King separately for $39.99/€39.99/£39.99.
Disappointingly, this doesn’t seem to deliver on Bungie Community Manager DeeJ’s prior statement that this weekly update would exhibit “the things we’re doing to celebrate the year-one Guardians who helped us build this community,” let alone his statement to Forbes that “They’ll get something better.”
On both those occasions he pointed to this weekly update, but within he simply says to those year one players that “we’ll have more fun stuff for you to announce in the very short term future, just for you.”
This also comes after the yesterday official announcement of a set of timed exclusive missions for… buyers of Red Bull drinks from 7-11. This is certainly on the more innocuous side of things, as for a few dollars you get a couple of The Taken King themed missions and an energy drink that you can either consume, gift to someone or simply throw away.
What might rankle fans in this case is that it’s a North American promotion only, so those in the rest of the world have to wait until January 1st 2016, the point at which the missions will be made available to everyone.
ashw92
$20 (which will be £20) for three class items, three shaders and three dances. That is crazy. That’s the same as either of the first two expansions cost. For just that. Seems like micro-transactions have made their way to Destiny, shame they’re not very micro.
In this case you’d still be better buying the Collector’s Edition for £80 and selling the game because you’d probably get more than £20 for it with the expansion pass 1. How on earth do they think this fixes the problem. I certainly won’t be wasting my money on shaders and class items that they haven’t provided the vault space to store.
Stefan L
You will get one additional gear slot on each character for these items, and to be fair, $20 is just the mark up from Legendary Edition to the Digital Collector’s Edition… it’s just that there’s the typical price disparity from the physical Collector’s Edition and going to Digital and not getting anywhere near as much stuff.
Phizzy
What are you talking about, selling the game with expansion pass 1? You don’t get that, it’s a new disc with all the content on it. You can’t resell the parts you don’t want.
Also, you don’t get a new gear slot, they are saying that the class item counts as a new gear slot because they now have unlockable abilities.
homerjnick
Techland have responded by taking the mickey out of Bungie…take a pic of yourself drinking water and post it on Twitter with the hastag #DrinkForDLC and you will get free DLC for Dying Light.
MrYd
This whole thing is weird. Eurogamer is ridiculously biased in favour of MS normally, but seems mildly obsessed with Destiny, despite all the deals they did with Sony.
So they do a horrible interview with someone who’s obviously not a professional PR person but a creative type, in which he comes across as a bit of, well, a normal creative type, really, who’s just been thrown into an interview with a website which obviously has some agenda.
Then the internet bullies him into apologising and he does one of those “I’m sorry you think I’m an asshat” apologies. One of those “technically an apology” types most people do at some point just to make life easier.
But then they make things worse by actually doing something bad (charging that much for the extra bits).
I might actually go and pre-order that bargain priced edition with all 3 expansions now. Just to piss off the whiny entitled parts of the internet.
Stefan L
I can’t reconcile any parts of what you’ve said with what I see has happened. I’ve met Tom Phillips on a number of occasions and from that, the difficulty of interpreting tone from transcribed interviews and Phillips’ own tweets, this was a good natured interview where he saw that people were going to be annoyed by the unbalanced pricing and exclusive content so asked about it and tried to ensure that his point was getting across. Luke Smith, within that context, tried to make a joke or light hearted commentary and it simply came off very, very poorly.
Of course, the business decisions were exclusionary and favoured the newcomer much more heavily than we typically see, and that, coloured by some very polarised views of Smith’s comments, has turned into this current air of general dissatisfaction.
Feel free to buy the game. $60 and £55 is a great price for that bundle, but it doesn’t mean that Activision and Bungie haven’t misjudged their existing audience and it doesn’t mean that what they’re asking for people to accept isn’t well out of the normal range that we see.
MrYd
Why is anyone surprised that someone new to the game, or who didn’t pay for the first two, overpriced expansions gets a better deal? That’s exactly what normally happens.
We’ve got Fallout 4 coming later this year. Based on previous games, there’ll be big chunks of DLC coming, and then another edition of the game coming with all that bundled in at a bargain price. Play it this year or wait a year? Will there be a big fuss about that? Was there such a stupid fuss over many, many other games that did exactly that?
I’d even argue that with a game like Destiny, getting new people playing is even more important. Or getting those that didn’t pay for all the DLC back in the game.
And yes, they’ve completely mishandled sorting out the mess this week. Charging what will inevitably be £20 for a few silly little items is excessive. But I don’t think he came across quite as badly as some people seem to think. Mind you, it was Eurogamer, and the people who comment there tend to get a bit excitable and declare the slightest thing to be the worst, most outrageous thing ever. Until the next thing comes along 5 minutes later.
Stefan L
As Phillips said in one of his questions, it’s not that it’s a price reduction for newcomers, which is to be expected when there are GOTY editions etc., it’s that the price reduction is huge in comparison to GOTYs. You can get the first year of content for $20, when a GOTY with all the DLC is usually the price of a full game again, or discounted by $10-20.
It’s important that newcomers aren’t priced out of the equation, but that doesn’t mean that existing customers shouldn’t feel like they’re being treated fairly. Is that being over entitled? To want to be treated fairly?
As I wrote yesterday, it’s like being told by your bank or ISP that you can’t get a specific deal or interest rate on your ISA, because it’s for new customers only. You don’t feel valued as a customer, and just as in this case, pulling that kind of stunt is only going to push your existing customers to look elsewhere and leave.
MrYd
So the real problem is the DLC was overpriced in the first place? And this new edition is slightly overpriced as well. Yes, you’ve got £75 or £80 worth of DLC (the first 2 were £20 each or £35 for both, yes?). But a year on, and all that would normally be included in some sort of GOTY edition for the normal price. Or less.
New players get the whole experience for slightly more than you’d normally expect. Old players get to pay £40 for the new content. Or can get the whole lot if they didn’t fall for the previous DLC rip-off prices.
And I’m ignoring the extra shaders and crap that some people seem to be getting worked up about. That’s not worth £20. Or anything at all, really. Moaning about that is just encouraging them to think crap like that is worth anything. That’s how we end up with a store filled with 100s of bits of cheap DLC.
As for banks and ISPs doing deals for new customers? If you’re happy with your current bank or ISP or whatever, you’re not going to change, are you? Whatever incentives the competition offers. With banks, it’s a pain in the arse to change everything for what probably isn’t going to be a huge benefit. With an ISP, once you’ve got one that performs well for you (which varies greatly in different areas – I’ve got a great service from Sky here, but others think they’re rubbish), would you risk moving it for something that might be worse but saves you a few quid or gives you something for moving?
With games though (excluding anything with a subscription), what are you going to do? Buy something else and stop playing your current game? That’d be silly. Maybe buy something else instead of what you think is unfairly priced DLC and get to play 2 games instead? Sounds much more sensible.
So the “new customers only” deal isn’t that important, and just as with everything else probably isn’t going to tempt many people away or be that much of a saving either.
bunimomike
One of the most confusing headlines to ever read on TSA. Bravo. :-)
Forrest_01
Yeah, I had to read & re-read it a couple of times before it made sense & I kinda knew the story.
It’s a little bizarre, as if it was changed to “Bungie’s Apology Adds More Buying Options To The Taken King Under A Cloud Of Red Bull” (which is literally just shifting text & adding a ‘to’), it makes much more sense. Well, to me anyway! ;)
Stefan L
That’s much better, actually. I’ll change that now.
Forrest_01
You are most welcome my friend. :)
bunimomike
I never get listened to. Wah, wah… wah! *wets bed*
double-o-dave
…& decides its too late in the night to muck around changing sheets, lays back down & wallows in own urine.
Tony Cawley
The biggest problem for me with all of this is that the game is rated T for teen, meaning 13 year olds can play. Then they pair up with an addictive, psychology and physiology altering drink to get extra missions. 13 year olds will jump at this and it’s a real problem. Plenty of studies have shown a distinct relationship between adolescent energy drink intake and erratic behaviour. It’s also massively addictive, trust me I used to drink minimum 3 cans per day, for 10 years. I really struggled to shake it.
Honestly, this partnership doesn’t sit well with me. If the game are rated 18, it’d be a different matter, but it isn’t.
WAXofDOOM
When I was a Care worker I would get through 2-3 Monster/Relentless/Red Bull drinks per day and it certainly had a massive effect on my attitude and encouraged weight gain. Noticed I was actually getting “wound up” quite easily. Don’t touch the stuff now* and it makes me cringe when I see teenagers and even younger guzzling this stuff. I’d happily see it banned.
*Consuming loads of coffee but also increased water intake drastically and eliminated all extra sugar.
WAXofDOOM
Have not played Destiny for ages. When it first came out I barely played anything else, but then when the dlc was announced with more details I abandoned ship straight away. I get why people like the game and cannot really fault the gameplay. There simply was not enough in it to warrant the price and I felt Bungie had had their hands tied and didn’t get to release the game they wanted.
Elder Scrolls Online has me hooked right now, as does Witcher III. But anyone who hasn’t played Destiny yet and wanting to try it, or even those getting a PS4/Xbox One for Xmas – are getting a good deal with the new bundles. Pays to wait I guess.
bladesew
FFXIV Heavensward – which I’m sure will have more content that The Taken King – is £29.86 on amazon.
Batman Arkham Knight is £39.85.
Witcher 3 expansion pass is £19.99.
Which tells me that you can sell a major expansion for less than The Taken King, sell an actual brand new AAA title for less than The Taken King, sell an expansion (along with 16 FREE pieces of dlc) for less than half of the price of The Taken King.
I will buy all of these before The Taken King because I’m confident they will be much better value for money and none of them make me feel exploited in the same way TTK does. I don’t think Bungie realise that people have bought the two previous DLC, completed the story campaign in 3-4 hours and are now extremely doubtful that The Reskinned King will provide $40 worth (nevermind £40) of content. House of Wolves’ reforge and etheric light mechanics looked like a cool way to customise loadouts for higher level players until you realised there was still so little new stuff to actually play.
The Red Bull DLC and $20 emotes have only made it worse. The Bungie forums are now even worse than normal – full of people (IMO) justifiably complaining about pricing and (again IMO) utter tossers hating on them for doing so. If the only people left playing are these kind of people then I’ll be even less likely to pick up TTK.
[NB: regarding Heavensward, yes FFXIV is a monthly sub MMO, but Destiny requires you to buy £20 dlc every few months and locks you out of endgame loot possibilities unless you do – so is effectively a subscription game which receives less content and developer care.]