With the recent launch of The Taken King behind it, Bungie have announced the next big thing for their MMO shooter Destiny, and that big thing is… microtransactions.

The announcement explains that the new system will be introduced in a patch on October 13. The patch will reintroduce a character named Tess Everis, who had previously existed in the game as a way to redeem promotional codes, but was removed in a patch earlier this year. Tess returns as part of the “Eververse Trading Company”, and will initially offer a range of emotes that players can purchase using a new in-game currency called ‘silver’. Silver can only be acquired by purchasing it directly from the XBox and Playstation stores for real money.

Bungie have gone out of the way in the announcement to reassure players that microtransactions aren’t going to be required to progress, and that new content won’t be gated behind them. They explain why they’re adding the new system thusly:

Our plan is to use these new items to bolster the service provided by our live team for another full year, as they grow and create more robust and engaging events that we’ll announce later this year. It has been, and continues to be, our goal to deliver updates to the game. Going forward, our live team is also looking to grow beyond vital updates and improvements to focus on world events, experiences, and feature requests.

Players will receive a small amount of silver for free, which will likely be enough to get a taste of the new system before plunging fully into it. It will be interesting to see just what effect microtransactions will have on Bungie’s business model for Destiny in the future.