I am not Bungie, obviously, but I can tell you how I've seen this happen in software shops that I've been in. First, keep in mind that Bungie has a UI Team. So, these changes did not likely pull developers off-task. As to why this might happen, UI reviews are very common - both based on user feedback and through focus groups. It would likely be a combination of these two facets that would have lead for the UI folks and the graphics folks to make changes to both the inventory screens, and other UI-based aspects of the game. Sometimes, these are down to bring a consistent theme/look and feel, sometimes it is to emphasize specific aspects, other times it is used to reduce similarity between different tasks and visual cues. The release notes hint at the first possibility as being the case, here. Specifically (from http://www.bungie.net/7_Destiny-Update--11172014/en/News/News?aid=12398), under Menus > Inventory: [quote]Updated Spinmetal, Relic Iron, and Helium Filaments icons to better represent in-game visuals.[/quote] The inventory items do actually look more like the actual world items now, in my opinion. Would venture a guess that the iconongraphy goes back to a much earlier point in the game's lifecycle, after which, various in-world items were tweaked, but their icons were not. That would basically just mean that the UI/Graphics people had enough bandwidth to be able to do cleanup work. It might seem like a nitpicky thing to change, but it also falls under those "finer details" that people generally would not notice, otherwise. Personally, I find my eye drawn to the new icons more quickly now. Whether that is just because they are different, or they do better convey the in-game items, I have no idea. :-)