Bungie’s online shooter Destiny is getting microtransactions. Players can purchase a new currency called Silver through the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One online stores, which can be used in-game to purchase emotes.
For the microtransactions, Bungie is reintroducing the character Tess Everis, who disappeared from the game earlier this year. At her company Eververse Trading Company, players can exchange the new payment method for the emotes. Bungie says it will introduce eighteen when the update goes online, on Tuesday, October 13. Previously, Tess was also used in the game to hand out rewards for things like pre-order promotions.
Developer Bungie guarantees that the introduction of the Eververse Trading Company will not affect the gameplay. “You will never lose a Crucible round or a raid because you don’t have the right emote equipped.” It is not yet clear what else can be bought with the new Silver currency in the future.
The American studio states that the proceeds of the new items will be used to strengthen and grow the so-called live team. In the future, that same team should not only be responsible for technical updates and improvements to the game, but also for actual content. To date, the content has always been delivered in the form of extensions.
This is in line with statements made by sources from news site Kotaku. They state that developer Bungie and publisher Activision want to abandon their plan to periodically release expansions for the game. Instead, the developers would release more frequent and smaller content updates like quests and missions and will be funded through the microtransactions. In that case, the next actual release from the two companies would be Destiny 2, in the fall of 2016. There is no official confirmation that Bungie and Activision are switching from expansions to distributed, free content.