Heh. (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Friday, October 18, 2019, 12:47 (1870 days ago) @ Claude Errera

Sure, empirically zero harm is unrealistic.

I feel like a "not being an asshole" clause shouldn't be a hard sell though.

For everyone, honestly.

And I totally agree. Where we differ is in the opinion about whether Bungie's being an asshole here.

They are, by adopting this specific method of monetization. Not out of mustache-twirling evil, but out of classic Bungie ineptitude. They adopted an existing, Activision-approved model, which are, by design, as exploitative as they can reasonably get away with. Remember how everything in launch D2 pushed you to Eververse? Sure, it had stuff available for Dust, and a decent rate of reward, but it was all tied to the loot box aspect, which, by design, exists to squeeze the most money out of you as possible, by not letting you get exactly what you want outside of chance. When you’re getting your tenth blue transmat effect, the free engrams exist more as a reminder of the store than as an ancillary reward that comes with playing the game for fun.

They have since moved away from it being a central focus of item acquisition, opting to supplement it with the expensive-but-guaranteed model, designed to target whales and streamers and such. It’s still exploitative, but not outright evil... even though better, fairer models exist, and Bungie could totally embrace them, while still making plenty of money from the store... The powers that be simply choose not to.