Bungie doesn't seem to have been planning a Destiny 2 subscription service after all, according to the latest developments on that front. Late in December 2022, data miners uncovered a series of references to a premium-tier Destiny subscription service that, as they claimed, was at one point planned for release, only for Bungie to subsequently drop these plans and focus on seasonal purchasing options, instead.Data miners claimed that the alleged Destiny 2 subscription would offer a number of different purchasing options, depending on how long the player would plan to stick with the game. This led to a non-insignificant uproar from the community, with players being displeased with the notion of Bungie possibly adding yet another monetization layer to an already fairly expensive hobby. Now, however, it's been revealed that there's more to the story after all.The initial Destiny 2 premium subscription leak sounded reasonably legitimate on its own, but the main reason why the story spread like wildfire is that it was kickstarted by a previously reliable and trustworthy group of data miners. They have now gone on record to apologize for the misinformation via their Discord server, claiming that "it was all meant to be done non maliciously," and that it was supposed to be a joke. The data miner announcing this piece of news also said that they were going to let the rumor spread further at first, but that they noticed people were getting too worried over the non-existent subscription service.
While some felt that a Destiny 2 subscription service could have some merit, players were disappointed and angry with Bungie's alleged plans, too, calling them "an absolute joke" on Reddit. The data miners' attempt at trolling the community led to an increase in negative sentiment towards the title and the studio behind it, with the only saving grace at the time being that the rumor also stated that the subscription service plans were already ditched.
The problem was exacerbated further still when the Season of Seraph release led to a huge number of new Destiny 2 server issues and connection errors. Though the connectivity problems weren't directly related to the falsified data mine in any sense, the two did combine to create an uneasy atmosphere in the community, which is unlikely to have been the plan for the data miners' "joke."
One could argue that Aztecross' attempt to troll Bungie and Destiny 2 was way better and more tasteful. In lieu of spreading false rumors, the Destiny YouTuber instead assembled a humorous This Week at Bungie blog post that was quickly acclaimed by much of the game's community. In the grand scheme of things, the fake data mine is unlikely to make much of a difference for the game, but it may end up leading to negative sentiment towards the miners themselves, who had only provided factual and correct information up until now.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Reddit