Activision's greed reaches new milestone with The Dawning

A week ago, Bungie announced The Dawning, Destiny 2's winter holiday themed event by saying ''It's a time to celebrate your light''. Now that the event has started, it seems more along the lines of ''Time to celebrate emptying your wallets''.

Monetizing holidays is nothing new. Mankind has figured out that exploit millennia ago, but just like with anything else there are dedicated groups that will excel in this field. EA has been a forerunner with shady policies for a long time, but Activision has decided to show just how serious a challenger it is for the Greed Throne. Just like EA is sinking the sharpened coins it has for teeth into DICE's work, Activision is doing it to Bungie.

Bungie Destiny 2

So Activision's checklist for the holidays in Destiny 2 looked something like:

- Festive decorations: Check

- Holiday activities: Check

- Eververse shop with new ways to gamble and appease the suits' greed: Check

So what are those items that outraged the community, once again in such a short timespan? It's three armour sets that might catch your eye and they are being sold by, you guessed it, . Sure, you can get Dawning Engrams, which is a fancy word for lootboxes by reaching milestones in the game, at a rate of three per week plus one you get for talking to Tess. 

Bungie Destiny 2, The Dawning gear

Now three armor sets consist of five pieces each, and share loot box pool with four emotes, four shaders, five transmat effects, 10 ghost shells, 10 ships and 11 sparrows. If you want a full armour set by the end of this three week long event which means 9+1 engrams in total, either go sacrifice goats to the dark gods of RNG or empty your wallet.

Bungie is responsible for several problems Destiny 2 has at the moment, but this one is on the game's publisher. The Dawning last year was released months after Rise of Iron, giving you more time to recuperate your funds. The Eververse shop wasn't leeching your money nearly as fast, as Curse of Osiris was released mere two week ago with over a hundred microtransaction items in its inventory and The Dawning added about 50 more. You only need a set of eyes and half a brain to see where this is going.