Destiny may not be the worst game ever made, but its reliance on addictiveness over substance as a method of retaining players is no secret. That apparently isn’t enough for the company though, as they’ve been pestering inactive players, asking why they aren’t taking any more of the Cryptarch’s nonsense.
Recovering addicts have been getting emails much like the one pictured here:
The questions range from quite reasonable to rather hilariously depressing, such as “I don’t have anyone to play with.”
Some of the other questions are pretty obviously targeting common complaints; such as unpleasant experiences with other players, recent changes made to the game (like gun nerfs) and walled-off content like The Taken King.
Unfortunately there’s no option to overtly say the game sucks or that it’s just a Skinner Box with decent shooting mechanics, but they do offer one of those feedback textboxes, if you fancy writing something that’s never going to get read.
It’s not completely unreasonable or uncommon for companies to conduct surveys, but the venomous criticism of the game (despite good sales) makes this especially noteworthy. The aforementioned addictiveness, grinding, bad voice-acting, lack of depth and aggressive business practices have made Destiny a laughing stock among a large number of gamers, so it will be interesting whether this feedback has any affect on either this game or the sequel.
Dean was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 39 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @SpookyWomble.