This DLC policy is absurd and violates business ethics. (Destiny)

by uberfoop , Seattle-ish, Friday, December 12, 2014, 01:36 (3455 days ago)

I've been out of the loop on Destiny. Haven't played it for a little while. Decided to load it up again.

I come back to find... I'm now locked out of the daily, weekly, and nightfall content because I don't have the DLC. As of this moment, I find myself with:
-No access to strikes that have a reasonable difficulty for my gear.
-No access to any content with special modifiers whatsoever (other than the Heroic modifier).
Perhaps this changes when the content is for non-DLC levels? Even if it does, a large fraction of the endgame content that I liked to play prior to my hiatus, a major chunk of what kept the experience balanced, is toast. The Destiny I saw when I logged onto my character tonight looked quite compromised compared with the Destiny that I had previously been familiar with.

This brings Halo 3's MP DLC policy to mind, but in that case, there was something of a reason to restrict playlist entry: without it, you risk wasting the money of people who did buy the DLC, which was a complaint that came up when they mostly reversed the policy with Halo Reach. This was also strictly an issue of matchmaking infrastructure; the core content was not actually locked away, and could still be accessed outside of the matchmaking system.
However, this content isn't matchmade in the first place (and largely isn't matchmaking-suitable), and thus there wouldn't really be any drawbacks to giving alternative options, such as offering two choices of weekly strike, or even just giving players greater freedom in setting up difficulty and modifiers for activities.

Thus, as of this moment, my only possible conclusion is that advertised content that I paid for, in a product which was said to not be subscription-based, has been removed for the sole purpose of selling me a replacement. And after just 3 months, no less!

This isn't an issue of content being unplayable because of development issues; that's a widespread problem with the modern games industry, but by and large it is not wrapped up in malicious intent.
This, however, is a configuration of a polished system. It is a deliberately-implemented mechanism. It is theft: if not in a legal sense, then a practical and ethical one.

I want to buy the DLC. Even if I found Destiny a little disappointing given Bungie's pedigree, even if it sounds like the DLC is getting somewhat lukewarm reception, I'd happily snap it up, because at the end of the day Destiny is a fun game that I like to play. And I will buy the DLC, if this policy is completely and utterly revoked. Until then, as much as I want to get in on the action, this is a line that I will not cross. Any desire that I have to play the content is not worth the encouragement of such business practices.

:(

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edit: I still have the interface up, looks like the daily story was just changed to Garden's Spire, and I'm able to select it. So these features aren't perma-locked all the time, they're just selectively locked on the content manager's whim. Which perhaps makes this "less bad", but doesn't significantly change my opinion on the system.