Back in August, the Destiny 2 community was shaken by a Bungie Director's Update. In it, director Luke Smith says that moving forward, seasonal content will no longer be permanent. Reddit users expressed their concern over this, and Paul Tassi of Forbes writes down reasons why this is concerning. At the time, the Destiny 2 community was in a "wait and see" situation.
But now that the inevitable wipe has already happened, the Destiny 2 community continues to be baffled by the necessity of removing paid content from the game as time passes by.
Not Long For the World
Starting with Destiny 2's Season 8, 'Season of the Undying,' under its latest expansion, 'Shadowkeep,' activities introduced during the current season had a time limit. They would only be available for the three months between its release and of the next season.
'Season of Undying' introduced 'Vex Offensive,' a 6-player arena battle mode that had players fighting off the Vex to keep it away from the Moon. The mode rewarded players with new gears and weapons, giving them more armaments for future battles.
While the rewards players get from completing the mission would be retained, starting with the 'Season of Dawn' released last December, the game mode will no longer be available to play. It got replaced by a new game mode, 'The Sundial', which dwarfs Vex Offensive in both scale and rewards.
Doesn't Make Sense
With Vex Offensive gone, players now know how Destiny 2's 'Evolving World' seasonal system works. Unlike the previous seasons of Destiny 2, it seems like content players purchased will no longer be there forever. Instead, players will have to spend a lot of time playing during the current season if they want to get all the rewards, and then the activity will be gone forever.
Bungie did confirm that seasonal rewards could still return in the future, but they didn't specifically comment on when and how this will happen.
The temporary nature of these seasons doesn't make sense to many players. Paul Tassi of Forbes again comments on how 'Destiny 2's Seasonal Content Removal Plan Still Does Not Make Sense', posting some of his reasons why.
First, it doesn't make sense for Bungie to spend resources and manpower to make content that has a set shelf life.
Second, it doesn't make sense for Bungie to remove new content just to save space, because it makes more sense to remove older content instead.
Third, it makes it hard for casual players to catch up with everybody else, especially for those who are just starting out.
Lastly, even hardcore players don't gain anything from this set-up because they could finish seasons fast anyway and easily run out of things to do in-game.
Possible Explanations
Bungie did offer explanations on why they're doing this, as outlined in the Director's Cut mentioned earlier. However, their primary reasoning for making Destiny 2 an 'evolving world' doesn't add up. Older content stays, but newer content doesn't, which doesn't composite an evolving world at all.
Players lose out from paying for content that becomes unavailable very quickly, so it doesn't make sense in the long term in terms of finances. Why would players buy something they know they'd lose within just three months?
One possible reasoning could be Bungie's limited resources. Bungie probably plans to introduce huge content in the future, and managing all of them at the same time for many concurrent players may be too much for their servers to hold. With Bungie severing ties with Activision last year and moving away from Blizzard.net, there might have been changes in the capacity Bungie could handle.
But that's all guesswork. Whatever the reason may be, Bungie has to address these concerns immediately. They risk losing their player base otherwise.
