Hello everyone. So recently folks are throwing around the "Dedicated Servers" topic again. Many just do not understand why this hasn't happened yet. The issue is plain & simple. Money. Bungie could get Dedicated servers. But if they do...then Destiny will dramatically change. They would have to implement either: A. A Monthly Subscription Model or B. Microtransactions that WILL sell daily. [Exp Boosts, Loot Drop Increase, Money (Glimmer) Increase, Vault Space, Exclusive Armor, Weapons, Vehicles] What many folks call Pay to Win. Why? Because without constant income these servers would cause Bungie to be operating at a loss. I will try to explain The cost of Upkeep. Keeping the servers "[i]in house[/i]" makes the developer (Bungie in this case) responsible for buying and maintaining the machines. That means hardware, backbone connections, bandwidth, support team, repair costs, electricity, etc. There's also the matter of having multiple connections to various internet providers in case one of them goes out or a line gets cut. Then having Backup power in case of public power loss. And multiple physical locations around the globe to host local servers so everyone can play with a reasonable ping. Lets not even get started on Account Data & Protection, and employees to do the fixing/maintenance/hardware replacement. The other option is to rent Servers. AKA: Paying someone else to manage all of that and just rent a group of servers from various locations. My friend rents a cheap server from a colocation facility (Don't quote me here but he pays about $60 or $70 a month, paid annually), and depending on the game he can host 3 maybe 5 (I can't remember the exact number) copies of a server on it. So...renting "[b]1[/b]" quality server costs a thousand-ish a year or more, depending on the quality of the server. Now, most companies have a "startup cost" because they have to buy the hardware and don't want anyone renting it for one month and dropping it, sticking them with the hardware cost. For the sake of discussion... Let's say a $1500/year server can host 12 copies of a game server. (Going to try and find some game stats) Let's say 5 to 6 players a game, that's 1400 copies that need hosting. 12 copies per machine, that's about 115 servers. At $1500/yr, that's $172,500 per year. Plus any fees (generally several hundred each) for renting a new server. And it's likely they need to keep more than that available so people can still play at peak hours, even though in the off hours and a month from now that number of servers required is gonna go down. It's likely if you're renting that many servers you can get some sort of deal from the colocation agency. But still, it's a lot of money and it adds up fast! This is why several games (This applies mainly to PC) take the "[i]Free Dedicated Server[/i]" approach. Anyone can download the dedicated server code -- it doesn't have any game assets like sounds, models, etc included anyway -- and then host the game themselves. It also has the ability to do a "[i]Listen Server[/i]," so someone can start up their own local server that only runs while they're playing the game. I have 0 idea how [i]Listen Servers[/i] work so I am going to mention them and move on. [i]Listen Servers[/i] are often more reasonable development solution, because it takes less development time and is compatible with consoles, then thr developer only has to maintain a "master server" that helps point people trying to join at the people hosting. Which is why you see that a whole lot more lately than things like dedicated servers. Having a developer or more likely a development team build and maintain a dedicated server package for a game costs time and money to create and is then given away for free. In this age of DLC, it can be hard for corporate to see the logic in that. Think about it...thencompany is operating at a loss. So... TL:DR Dedicated Servers cost money to keep running. If you want Dedicated Servers...prepare to pay for them. If you enjoy Destiny being Free...you're stuck with P2P. Nothing is truly free in this world. Edit 2: I am NOT saying lets NOT get Dedicated Servers. I am saying...if it comes...it will probably come with a price.