Destiny 2’s Microtransaction Collaborations Are Now Marketing Sony Movies

“You’re not cool if you’re not doing crossovers,” seems to be the refrain in most video games now. It mainly started with Fortnite, who has amassed hundreds of characters for an IP collection to kickstart its metaverse ambitions, but spread to places like Call of Duty and others in short order once everyone realized how popular the concept was.

Destiny 2 has been diving deep into this since 2022 when they started with, what else, a Fortnite collaboration.

But now things are starting to get pretty weird, and a little bit past perhaps where Destiny 2 should go as a sci-fi shooter. Today, Bungie showed off a new collab featuring a Ghostbusters-themed ship, ghost shell and sparrow which will launch on March 19. This is, of course, not random. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is out on March 22. And that film is produced by who else, Sony, Bungie’s new overlords.

Destiny’s past main collaborations, all involving full armor sets, have been Fortnite, Assassin’s Creed, PlayStation (God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghosts of Tsushima), The Witcher and a few weeks ago, Mass Effect. But those are storied gaming icons and this is…Ghostbusters? And being used as just very clear marketing for the fifth Ghostbusters movie out the following weekend? Feels pretty weird.

The obvious rationale for this here is money. Bungie has missed revenue goals by 45% this year, and collabs can fill the gaps in a few ways. First, you no doubt get a good chunk of money for say, agreeing to advertise Ghostbusters in your cash shop. Second, at least for the more sought-after collab armors from other games, you get to A) price those higher and B) not sell them for Bright Dust where players can simply save up for them over time. They must pay that amount, and buying all three sets for your characters? That’s close to $60 much of the time.

I have already been keeping an eye on just how frequently Bungie has been doing collabs now, but this Ghostbusters one feels like it’s venturing into new territory, and a Slimer ghost is just…I don’t know man. Even in a game where you can get things like a beach ball ghost for summer events, and there’s a certain amount of goofiness in Destiny generally, there’s a difference between that and goofiness in service of marketing.

I know not everyone agrees with me here, and many think collabs are good and fun and I’m just being cranky. But I think Fortnite has caused them to be overloaded with many games in general, and the more of these Destiny specifically does, the less I’m sold on them. And this one seems especially bad, making me wonder how much worse we may get from here.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.