According to Schreier, Bungie approached Activision during the early days of Destiny regarding the studio’s declining ability to produce new downloadable content every few months. Part of the issue stemmed from the tight schedule and the fact that the development tools were hard to work with and create content from. Like most publishers, Activision has certain numbers and revenue targets it expected to see from the developer so any delay to that development schedule was going to be a big problem. Eververse served as a way to provide a bit of relief, drip feeding new content to players while giving Bungie more development time and another revenue stream.
Though unconfirmed officially, Schreier hinted that Activision wasn’t pleased with the original Eververse sales numbers for Destiny 1. So for Destiny 2, the pressure was increased to make this system more viable, leading Bungie to place a bigger focus on it by adding more items to the store such as unique cosmetic gear, emotes, sparrows, and more. Unfortunately, the practice has ultimately locked more than half of the available cosmetic items like shaders behind a paywall and randomized engrams.
The community as a whole has seemingly reached their breaking point over the past month. Alongside the Curse of Osiris expansion, new microtransaction items were added into the game, which drove the community to take a closer look at the store’s mechanics. After discovering some alarming trends and a job listing for a senior progression designer revolving around vanity items through Bright Engrams, community members stormed the forums to post a wall of remove Eververse topics. Bungie has yet to post an official response, though community manager DeeJ has posted that the studio has much to discuss in 2018.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Source: DTR Podcast
