Bungie Apologizes for Collector's Edition Fiasco

Well, if you’re a Destiny fan and you’ve looked at Reddit, the official forums, or any gaming website in the past week, you’ve probably already lost your mind over the whole $80 collector’s edition thing and you don’t need a refresher. But for the rest of us, the story goes that Bungie is releasing a new “collector’s edition” of the game to the public for 80 bucks—this collector’s edition will have the vanilla game, as well as the two expansion packs that have thus far been released. Simple enough so far, right?

Well, in addition to the two expansions, this collector’s edition would come with new emotes, armor shaders, and exotic weapons with EXP bonuses—some neat stuff, but if you were a veteran player of the game, you didn’t get any of that. If you wanted those three things, you’d have to buy the collector’s edition, which meant shelling out eighty bucks for that handful of content. That made people mad—but what made people furious was some rather snarky things Destiny creative director Luke Smith had to say about the controversy in an interview with Eurogamer. Needless to say, he comes off like something of a thoughtless jerk.

Destiny players rallied together to oppose Bungie’s apparent lack of sympathy, and Bungie, to their credit, actually responded very quickly, and yesterday revealed both an apology and a much more convenient way for old fans to get their hands on this new content.

Basically, old-time users can pay $20 bucks for the new content. A little much, I’d still say, but hey—it’s a compromise. Additionally, to sweeten the deal, ‘VIPs’—or people with both expansions who hit level 30 by the first year—will be getting some extra stuff, although Bungie didn’t say what that extra stuff would be, exactly.

And the apology from Luke Smith? Short and sweet. An excerpt:

“Reading my interview with Eurogamer and imagining it came from some random developer of a game I love - that random developer looks like an Asshat. But that Asshat was me - and those words rightfully anger you. I’m sorry. My words made it sound as if Bungie doesn’t care about their most loyal fans. We do care. We are listening. And we will make it right.”

Awww. Well, all is well that ends well, right?

...Right?