Bungie and Activision are trying really hard to make their money back on Destiny you guys. I mean, we all know that it cost an awful lot to make, but I don’t think we quite understood exactly how impoverished it made the creators of Halo, one of the most iconic and best-selling video game series of all time, and Activision, the home of the literal best-selling video game series of all time, Call of Duty. They’re really struggling, guys. First they had to release two DLC packs for $20 a pop, which many would argue were overpriced but c’mon – they spent $500 million on Destiny, so how else were they going to make that money back other than drastically overvaluing the game’s extra content?
And now we have the game’s third expansion, The Taken King, which they’ve priced at $40 because this time around it actually contains new subclasses and story missions that won’t take place in the same areas you were forced to visit over and over again in the base game. Wow, what a steal! I mean, for that price you could purchase Bloodborne, or Dragon Age Inquisition, or The Evil Within, or Wolfenstein: The New Order, or the Destiny base game and also have $10 to spare, but why would you want to purchase those full games when you could get your hands on the content that owners of the game wanted to see in the first season of the DLC, but has instead been reserved for the second season in order to ensure that people continue to funnel money into the game?
Also See: Destiny is an Ungrateful Bastard That Steals Your Time and Money
As if that’s not enough, they’ve also included a fun little meta-game in which when you purchase The Taken King, you have must go on a quest to find a vending machine in order to find a mysterious can of Red Bull, which will grant you EXCLUSIVE access to an “EPIC NEW QUEST” in The Taken King…. that DLC that you spent $40 on… wait, this doesn’t sound like a fun game at all. In fact, that sounds positively irritating, but it’s oh so very true.
Red Bull has partnered with Bungie/Activision to grant Red Bull drinkers a “never-before-seen, multistage mission in The Taken King that will test the speed and strategic abilities of Destiny players in new ways,” that can only be accessed using promotional codes on the bottom of cans of Red Bull, that must then be entered on the drink manufacturer’s official website. There’s also a Bonus XP buff that will increase all XP gained in 30 minutes by 50%. If you don’t enter one of these promo codes, which is only available to owners of The Taken King DLC, you must wait until January 1st, 2016 to get your hands on the brand new mission, effectively meaning that this new promotion will lock you out of content in a DLC package that you’ve spent $40 on.
At this point it seems as though Bungie and Activision are trying to give their PR teams headaches, and regardless of whether you’re the sort of person who’d defend the anti-consumer actions of a faceless organization for some reason, spewing out that tired, misguided line “well if you don’t like it, don’t buy it,” completely ignoring the fact that is exactly that attitude that leads to this sort of content becoming increasingly overvalued and extortionately overpriced, you have to admit that this is pretty shitty. If you’d spent $40 on DLC you’d absolutely want to be granted access to everything it had to offer, and not find yourself forced to purchase an energy drink before you were granted permission to one of its quests.
