In a development Bungie could have done without, the Destiny 2 developer has already pulled a contentious $15 starter pack offered in Season of the Wish, which just went live yesterday. The pack provided a pitiful assortment of goods and was marketed towards new players, a combination of things the community vociferously and swiftly pushed back on.
The starter pack's description proudly proclaimed that players could "experience the power of build-defining Exotic weapons by instantly unlocking three of Destiny 2's finest: Traveler's Chosen, Ruinous Effigy, and Sleeper Simulant". That's in addition to an Exotic ship, Sparrow, and Ghost Shell, along with 125,000 Glimmer, 50 Enhancement Cores, five Enhancement Prisms, and one coveted Ascendant Shard.
This offering might seem innocuous enough to a new player, price tag aside, but as Paul Tassi of Forbes puts it: "You sort of have to be a Destiny 2 player to understand what an outrageously bad deal this is." He uses the example of The Forsaken Pack, another of Bungie's offerings, which includes two dozen Exotics, a dungeon, and a raid. It originally retailed for $20 and is currently on sale for $5. It's not a great look, from what we understand.
Guardians fought back by leaving negative Steam reviews. Organising, they used their collective power to populate the DLC page with the user tags "Capitalism", "Crime", and "Psychological Horror", which is admittedly pretty funny.
Redditor Grizz3d, in response to Bungie's post pulling the pack, put the community response quite succinctly: "I just don't understand how that Starter Pack was greenlit. Like, what part of fleecing money off new players wasn't going to end with insane pushback from the community? It's just a staggering disconnect between Bungie and the players. It's good you got rid of the pack, it's just disheartening that anyone at Bungie thought it was a good idea in the first place."
This follows the release of the costly Witcher 3 crossover armour sets, which we think look decidedly awesome but again bear an outrageous price tag. With the next expansion delayed and the studio itself already hit with layoffs, Sony's independent live service outpost's position is looking increasingly precarious.