That wizard may have come from the moon, but that copy of Destiny that just popped up on your PS4 is just an advert.
Imagine the reaction if that weren't the case: say, if Sony started bombing your system with Blu-ray-sized full game whoppers. That's what people thought was happening this week, as Destiny started appearing in their playlists.
Like so many current-gen games, it has a gargantuan footprint, occupying about 38 GB of your console's hard drive. If a company like Sony began stealth-pushing anything like that out, players would riot, and understandably.
But there's no reason to, because that's not what's happening.
Yes, Sony's putting a little Destiny sale box in the PlayStation 4's horizontal info-crawl, and that is irritating if you're not an ads-as-necessary-evil apologist. But in this case, you can opt out of the whole affair with just a few clicks, no money spent, and I guess I'm grateful Sony's drawing the line there. Others might not have.
To make that happen, head over to PlayStation 4 Settings, click System, then Automatic Downloads, and you'll notice something called Featured Content. The box beside it's checked, because we're still sadly having to opt out instead of opt in to these things. Uncheck that box and you're in the clear.
Microsoft sticks kinda-sorta ads on the Xbox One's home screen (see the "What's New on Xbox One" column), and Sony sticks all sorts of placeholder, doubtless paid-for app portals in the PlayStation 4's TV & Video library. So there's precedent, to the extent that precedent is a justification for anything. I assume the fuss in this case stems from the worry that Sony was actually pushing gigs of data to gamers on the sly.
If you think ads or product pitches that live beside your paid-for content are okay—and I'm not saying I do— it's worth noting how relatively little Sony's done of it, so far.
