Destiny 2 players have collectively spent 25 years deleting shaders

Publish date: 2022-12-15

Ask a Destiny 2 player what issues still bug them about the game and somewhere near the top of the list you'll probably hear the word "shader".

A shader, for the uninitiated, is a Destiny item which recolours your in-game armour or weapons with a specific palette. In Destiny 1, shaders affected your whole armour and when you acquired a shader you could keep it permanently. In Destiny 2, Bungie changed shaders into a consumable which was only applicable to a single piece of gear. This change was not well received.

All of which means Destiny 2 players spend a lot of time deleting trash shaders they don't want to make room for the ones they do. Last night, amongst more serious statistics, Bungie revealed the total number of deleted shaders in Destiny 2 so far: 807,635,124.

Currently you have to delete each shader one by one. You hold down a button and watch a second-long progress bar fill up as the game makes sure that yes, you do want to erase this 100th Atlantis Wash.

Posting on reddit, Destiny fan SlickeryV calculated that at a second per shader, players have spent 25.59 years sending their unwanted shaders to the bin.

It's a system which is changing soon - on 28th August - when an option mass delete shaders is finally implemented, nearly a year on from launch. Thank goodness.

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