Destiny 2’s The Dawning event started as a cute holiday-themed way for players to celebrate the season but has turned into a rallying point for arguments against the game’s microtransactions. The event’s unique cosmetics and armor are largely gated behind the Eververse store and cost Bright Dust to buy directly.
If you earn engrams via the XP bar you don’t get Dawning Engrams, you only get the usual Bright Engrams. Players can only earn a maximum of three free Dawning Engrams a week, and the items found within can’t even be broken down for Bright Dust like normal Eververse items can be. This has been the last straw for many Destiny 2 fans as it makes the event rewards impossible to get without forking over cash.
It’s become obvious that under the veneer of holiday cheer, The Dawning is an insidious attempt to get players to pay for microtransactions. The whole event is shoved in your face and geared towards directing you towards the Eververse. Well, players have had enough, and for the last few days, almost every post on the Bungie Destiny 2 forums has been a request to remove the Eververse.
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I’ve played a fair amount of Destiny 2, including the incredibly disappointing Curse of Osiris DLC, and I have to stand with other players on this. The endgame is laughable, and when the only thing left to do is to farm for gear, it’s insulting that more and more of it is becoming locked behind microtransactions. The Eververse was annoying, to begin with, but considering that now you can’t even grind for event armor, it breaks the whole reason for sticking around after you finish the story content. Why should anyone do raids, trials, or anything if you’re prevented from accessing some of the most prestigious gear in the game?
And finally, I know we say it a lot, but we hear your feedback on Eververse. We both want our players to feel respected, and to deliver great content regularly to our community. Expect lots of discussion with the dev team and an update on our path forward after the new year.
— Christopher Barrett (@cgbarrett) December 23, 2017
Destiny 2 Game Director Christopher Barrett gave a tepid response to player’s concerns via Twitter. However, we’ve heard Bungie is “listening” before. Seeing as Bungie was already caught skimming XP to prevent you from accumulating Bright Engrams, it’s getting tiring having them pretend like it didn’t know what it was doing every time fans catch onto something scummy.
Bungie will likely make event engrams earnable through XP in the future in response to this, but I’m sure there will be another controversy involving microtransactions in Destiny 2 in the future.
