Bungie Responds to Accusations that Destiny 2 Matchmaking Tricks Players Into Spending Money on Cosmetics

Yesterday, we reported on the news that Activision may have filed a patent a couple of years ago that could have taken advantage of matchmaking in multiplayer, encouraging players to spend more money on downloadable content in an effort to keep up with more experienced players. This put some fans in heavy concern about ethics, although the publisher made it clear that the system was never put into use.

"This was an exploratory patent filed in 2015 by an R&D team working independently from our gaming studios," an Activision rep noted. "It has not been implemented in-game."

And even though that cleared the air, some Destiny fans have been concerned that the system might have seeped its way into Destiny 2, forcing players to seek out extravagant items in an effort to keep up with others. But that doesn't appear to be the case either.

Yesterday on Twitter, Good Game producer Jesse Cox noted, "Just when I thought 'no one could get worse than @ea', @activision comes along and…" along with the original Rolling Stone link to the patent story.

DeeJ, community manager for Bungie, went on the record soon thereafter, noting that the technology was not in use for either of the Destiny games – and wouldn't be, either. You can check out the tweet below.

You won't find this functionality in our games, including Destiny or Destiny 2.

— DeeJ (@DeeJ_BNG) October 17, 2017

The idea of utilizing downloadable content to make matchmaking more fair for players definitely sounds like a bad system, but it sounds like Activision didn't go through with it – which is a good thing, because it would've likely caught a lot of hell from its fans if it did so.

It's bad enough that Destiny 2 is already going through some negative hubbub over the existence of its Eververse, where players can pick up a number of emotes and other cosmetics within the game. But those purchases are clearly optional, despite their controversy, and players can still unlock quite a bit in the game, especially when it comes to completing missions.

Now, does that mean we'll ever see this structure put in place, like with future Activision products or maybe even something by another third party? It's too soon to tell, but we're just happy that the team decided not to go through with it. It would've led to a lot of backlash.

Destiny 2 is available now for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and coming October 24th for PC.