Destiny 2‘s Anniversary Pack and Witch Queen expansion have sparked dungeon paywall concerns on Reddit, leaving players suspicious.
Coming on February 22nd of 2022, Bungie’s Destiny 2 has managed to rack up a decent amount of hype for its upcoming expansion, The Witch Queen. The features shown in the initial showcase, such as the new glaive weapon, Legendary Mode, and six-player activity, have drawn quite a bit of interest.
But that interest has taken a turn for the worst. Only two days ago, Reddit user NotAnADC posted about the growing worry that the game’s new dungeons will be locked behind a paywall. Specifically, they refer to the 30th Anniversary event being held by Bungie and the new pack available to purchase with it.
Suspecting it to be “an experiment to see if the community will be willing to pay for dungeons as standalone”, the pack includes a range of items, emotes, an armour set and you guessed it – a dungeon. The “Treasure-themed three-player Dungeon in the Cosmodrome” is exactly what’s kicking up a storm.
The user noted that “in no way shape or form have Bungie explicitly stated that buying seasons will come with Dungeons”, which is certainly true. Things only seemed to worsen thanks to Bungie Community Manager, Cozmo23’s reply to the original post.
The comment, which is currently sitting at a negative rating of -590, giving us a glimpse of the backlash associated with this decision. It reads:
“Hey everyone. We’ve seen some debate around the new dungeon content and wanted to clarify how it will be delivered next year.
If you get the Digital Deluxe Edition of The Witch Queen you will receive the expansion, all four Seasons for the next year, and the two Dungeons. If you get the Standard Edition, you can still upgrade to the Deluxe Edition to get the dungeons later. We will also be offering a separate way for you to purchase the Dungeons in the future, but they will not be included in the Season passes.
We will share more info on this closer to when this content is set to go live.”
The Standard Edition for Destiny 2 is currently priced at $60 AUD, whereas its Digital Deluxe counterpart is a whopping $120 AUD in comparison. So you’re coughing up double the price if you really want to jump into those dungeons. Or you can always hope that the alternative promised for the future will be far less pricey.
All of this has resulted in concerns that the developer’s anniversary party is “an experiment” to see if people will buy the dungeons “as standalone”. If you’re going by Cozmo23’s comment, then these concerns are pretty spot on.
"I am no villain. And you are no hero. We are paracausal." pic.twitter.com/QtoJS46qwY
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) September 1, 2021
My suggestion? Add the dungeons to Season Passes instead. Elder Scrolls Online has a pretty decent and comparable method to this sort of situation; when a new expansion is released, players still have to purchase that content, but DLC released down the line (associated with said expansion) is either purchased separately, or included as part of being a subscriber.
Which, funnily enough, is exactly how the last expansion cycle of Destiny 2 worked.
Yes, the content is still locked behind a paywall of some kind, which sucks. But free-to-play games like Destiny 2 need ways to keep themselves up and running too, so a middle ground solution like this one sounds pretty reasonable.
Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen comes out February 22, 2022.
