Never let it be said that Bungie doesn't take cheating seriously. The company was accused of taking it just a little bit too seriously, in fact, because many Destiny 2 players on PC claim they are being banned from the game for using overlays and common hardware monitoring tools. In response, Bungie said that it has not and will not ban players from using these tools despite the community's claims.
Many popular gaming tools, from communication services like Discord to hardware monitors like Fraps, use some kind of overlay shown in-game via code injection. Unfortunately, aimbots and other cheating tools use the same techniques to help cheaters get an upper hand over other players. As part of its efforts to preserve Destiny 2's integrity, Bungie decided to prevent anything that relies on code injection from working.
We knew before the title's launch that Destiny 2 wouldn't let players use these in-game overlays; Bungie also banned them from the game's beta. Yet there's a good chance many of the game's players won't have participated in the beta or gone crawling through the company's support site to learn that nigh-ubiquitous tools won't function in the game, and Destiny 2 doesn't make these restrictions clear when it's first launched.
Now, many Destiny 2 players have taken to Twitter, Reddit, and the game's official forums to complain about unfair bans. It's not clear what's causing the bans, but the prevailing theory is that players are using or attempting to use in-game overlays. Bungie has denied these claims—a representative said on the Destiny 2 forums that in-game overlays might cause the game not to run but will not result in a ban.
Bungie's David Shaw denied that players are being banned for using in-game overlays in a tweet:
We do block programs from pushing their code into our game. Most overlays work like that. We don't ban for that tho. That's internet BS.
Yet if the in-game overlays aren't the problem, and if the many reports of unfair bans are to be believed, it wasn't clear why Destiny 2 players are being removed from the game shortly after its release. Bungie abstained from responding to these claims for a while, but it finally published a post saying:
We have seen lots of questions about bans being issued in the PC version of Destiny 2. To provide some information, we would like to share some facts. The following is true:Destiny 2 cannot automatically ban you, only Bungie can ban a player after a manual investigationYesterday, we banned approximately 400 players on PCBans were applied to players who were using tools that pose a threat to the shared ecosystem of the gameWe did not (and will not) issue any bans for the use of overlays or performance tools, including Discord, Xsplit, OBS, RTSS, etc.Information on using third-party applications can be found here: https://www.bungie.net/en/Help/Article/46101 We are overturning 4 of the bans that were issued during the PC BetaWe are committed to providing an experience that is fun and fair for the millions of players who have joined us in this community.
It's interesting that the company overturned four bans issued during the PC beta, because in a help article, Bungie said there's no way for players to appeal bans. That was actually part of the reason why people were so upset—many feared they would be permanently banned from a game they just bought with little to no explanation why. On this, at least, Bungie decided to reverse its course and restore a handful of accounts.
Bungie has not responded to a request for comment.
