There’s been talk of how toxic gaming communities have been (especially this forum) and its the reason why many developers no longer communicate with them. Hell, the blowback from Deej’s endgame=friendship is an example of this. But let me tell you: all of that is [i][b]disingenuous[/b][/i]. Developer isolation isn’t the effect of gamer toxicity, but the [u]cause[/u] of it. When a developer goes radio silent, refusing to address many of the game’s issues, dissent and division will breed [i]instantly[/i]. I was a witness to this in Vanilla D1. Bungie’s communication problems have been long documented, and when they depend on their trademark vaguespeak to communicate with people, it will almost always backfire. I’ve said before that Deej’s endgame=friendship comment is everything wrong with D2 and Bungie’s relationship with the community and I still stand by that. It really showed how out of touch Bungie was with its community (ironically after using them as prerelease hype fodder), from development to communication. It showed that, after years of leaning on them to push D1 during its content droughts, they no longer had any use for them. And what’s terrible? Deej wasn’t exactly [b]wrong[/b]. I’ve personally forged more friendships on Destiny than any other game I’ve played in my [b][i][u]life[/u][/i][/b]. But to use that as a way to dodge around the endgame debate was quite insulting. And many more people felt the same.