Destiny 2 Is Cracking Down On Some Shady Business

Destiny 2: Forsaken is right at the cusp of releasing and Bungie is getting ready to attempt to wow fans with the next big expansion pack for the sci-fi first-person shooter. In preparation for the release the company is also doing a little bit of house cleaning and sweeping up some of the more pressing issues standing in the way of keeping the game fair and balanced. This meant that Bungie had to do some cracking down on some shady business that was taking place in Destiny 2.

The info about the crackdown was rolled out during the weekly update on the official Bungie website, where the team outlines a special section in the security features where they discuss updates to the security for multiplayer matches. They will be banning players who take advantage of disconnects during multiplayer matches using advanced and improved detection methods.

Part of this fix is in response to players who were allegedly tampering with the connection to the Crucible PvP matches. Disconnecting during the matches would award the win to the player still in the match. The benefit of this is that if you force your opponents to disconnect then you automatically win the match.

Some players had been using this tactic to gain free wins in the PvP modes of Destiny 2. Bungie, however, was not blind to these machinations.

The company had been receiving reports about this illicit behavior as well as utilizing tools from third-party websites to identify the perpetrators. According to the post, Bungie points out that the team's internal tools have far more data on the players than what players may have access to, and Bungie can pinpoint exactly why a player left a match, which is very interesting.

The tools can monitor if the player left the match due to a network issue on the developer's end, or due to an ISP issue, or because the player chose to leave the match on their own accord.

I imagine the tools log flags for certain player activity -- such as did the player select "Quit Match" from the menu, or did they choose the "Disconnect" option from the settings. Did the player immediately return to the lobby or did they exit the game for good. Did they reconnect within seconds/minutes or did they stay disconnected. And what was the amount of time between the last login and when they disconnected.

As noted in the post, effective September 4th, 2018, in accordance with the launch of Destiny 2: Forsaken, Bungie will apply more restrictions and bans to players who have been exploiting opponent disconnections during PvP matches that took place during Season 3. This will also be applied to players attempting to disconnect through boosting. In Call of Duty and some other competitive first-person shooter games like Combat Arms, some players have been known to "boost" other players by feeding them kills, or in this case purposefully disconnecting from the match so the other player picks up the win.

Bungie will be clamping down on this activity following the launch of Destiny 2: Forsaken, so perpetrators beware.