Let me start off by answering some of the tirades you may have started preparing in your head the second you read the title of this post... -No, I don't hate micro-transactions in general or the people who spend their hard-earned money on them. -Yes, I know that Bungie claims that micro-transactions fund the continuing development of content and maintenance, which should be good for all of us. -Yes, I am an adult with a profitable career. No, I'm not whining because my parents don't fund my gaming (they never did, I bought first games when I turned 17 and moved out). -I'm aware Bungie is a company that is in business and needs to make profit while still maintaining old customers and attracting new ones. When Bungie first announced a "Silver" currency, I was not surprised or particularly disappointed. This kind of model isn't uncommon in MMORPGs and we all know that Bungie borrows heavily from their format in Destiny. Giving players the opportunity to buy specific glamor items like emotes, shaders, and emblems is pretty run of the mill. It offers people with the extra money an opportunity to invest in a game they enjoy, and Bungie told us that this income would help provide better services and steady content updates as an alternative to regularly purchasing pricey DLC. I was apprehensive but accepting of that premise. Let's look at what happened though... Bungie experienced massive success early on. Emotes were enjoyed, and Silver spent some time as the most purchased item in the Playstation Store. That means a lot of income (on all consoles) was coming in, and people were satisfied with purchases they felt were fairly priced. A disturbing trend begins; Silver slowly becomes more necessary in acquiring in-game content and experiences. Examples of this include the SRL Record Book and a lack of new masks through playing rather than paying in FOTL 2. The "events" our previous Silver purchases were supposed to fund weren't delivered as a result of an existing large investment on the community's part, they were thinly-veiled advertisements for [i]more[/i] Silver purchases, in which those purchases would be necessary to fully participate. Large chunks of content continued to release as DLC, major changes to in-game quality-of-life, currencies, and item balancing coincide with DLC releases, indicating that this "maintenance" is prompted and funded by those installments, not Silver purchases. Server issues in PvP and PvE seem to get progressively worse, rather than better, with the overwhelmingly unpopular SBMM seeming to be the largest change. Benefits from Silver purchases became increasingly randomized. If you want a "Ghost-Ghost", you can't just decide if a particular price is fair and then pay it. You now need to buy a large number of items you didn't want in the hopes of getting the one or two you really liked. These all make me worry that Bungie is giving less back for a business practice more commonly found in Free-to-Play games than they originally implied, and that they may intend to push the business model more aggressively in their favor in the future. As customers, we've spent a lot of time reasoning out how what we've bought makes sense. We don't want to look like idiots for investing in Destiny, and on many levels we aren't. Unfortunately, we do need to be asking some hard questions before we continue spending money. Here are the ones that come to my mind: - Bungie promised better maintenance and regular new content for my Silver purchases, do I feel like they delivered that? - When I buy something with Silver, do I actually get the item I intended to at a total price that seems reasonable to me? - Am I comfortable with the direction Silver purchases are moving in? How far would I like to see them go? Would I support paying for weapons/perks/armor/light levels? - Does my spending send a message to Bungie that I support the current format, cost, and quality of their events? Bungie is a business, so ultimately the product they deliver, the promises they keep, and the quality of their future work depends on the standards we hold them to as customers. To sum it up on a light note; Luke Smith expects us to throw money at our screens, as if Destiny were an exotic (engram) dancer. Nothing wrong with that, but let's remind him the better dancers make it rain, and just sitting on stage promising some really great moves later doesn't get you very far in the entertainment industry. [url=http://www.bungie.net]link[/url]