Bungie announces major plans to combat Destiny 2 aimbot hackers, DDOS attacks

It is the nature of team vs team competition that if one team must win, another must lose. When we lose we can often rationalize it in our heads that the other team played better, or maybe we didn't play to our full potential. Even so, losing still sucks.

What really sucks though is losing not through skill difference or map knowledge, things that can be improved open, but through the opposition throwing their integrity to the wind and using game-breaking cheats to turn the odds in their favour, often into guaranteed wins for them.

Bungie has stated this since January the detection of common gaming cheats such as aimbots, wallhacks and DDOS attacks has increased by 50% with there being an even higher increase in the upper skill brackets.

The more hardcore cheats are really only common on PC with the consoles only dealing with the odd DDOS attack here and there. These cheats are especially prevalent in the Trials of Osiris mode due to its higher stakes.

This drastic increase in demoralizing losses due to forces beyond the players control has led to many abandoning the competitive game mode and some have even left Destiny 2 itself.

It’s likely that many of those reading this have suffered a soul-crushing defeat at the hands of cheaters when they were only a single win away from achieving Flawless and gaining access to the Lighthouse.

So it seems Bungie has taken note of the increase in cheaters but what exactly do they plan to do about it? News was given in the most recent ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post by Destiny Engineering Director David Aldridge. Here’s what he had to say on the matter:

“We’re shifting more people to help work on this space. More eyes analyzing cheater reports, more developments in our anti-cheat systems, more people developing and testing new ban rules, and more fuel for the hammer…”

This change was somewhat expected as the different anti-cheat systems used by Destiny 2 are not a catch all system.

Some cheaters do fall through the cracks and it's always good to have a manual report system, with real developers checking the reports, to ensure a higher percentage chance of ridding the game of as many of these people as possible.

Aldridge went on the add:

“We’re changing a key policy – fireteammates of cheaters are no longer innocent. We now reserve the right to restrict or ban any player who has benefitted from cheating, even if they didn’t cheat themselves.

"This includes scenarios where players group up with or provide account information to a guide or carry service, which then cheats on their behalf...If you LFG your way into a fireteam with a cheater, get out and report them. If you ride them to a flawless, the Banhammer will come for you as well.”

This is an interesting change that could see some backlash. An example for one problem that could come from this is say you team up with two other players via one of the various LFG sites for a run at Flawless in Trials of Osiris.

Unbeknownst to you, one of the players you have teamed up with is using a subtle aim-bot that has been detected by the anti-cheat system but is difficult to notice in-game. You just think they are playing really well.

Your Fireteam achieves Flawless and a few hours later your entire Fireteam is banned due to the actions of that cheater. Do you believe this ban is warranted for the two players in the Fireteam who didn't actually cheat?

The opposite side of this is some players will be fully aware that a player on their Fireteam is cheating and when they are eventually banned along with the cheater they will feign ignorance at the idea of their Fireteam member cheating in the hope Bungie will show mercy and unban them. These are the difficulties Bungie will have to deal with once this change goes live.

Lastly, Alderidge finished with:

“We’re considering requiring a much higher player time investment to play Trials. We’re interested in your thoughts on this. What if you had to have ~100 hours of play on an account to participate in any Trials match where a ticket with more than four wins was at stake on either side?

"Increasing the time it takes for a new account to become Trials-ready increases the power of our Banhammer (since cheaters can always create new dummy accounts), but it also adds barriers to honest, law-abiding PvPers that want to check out Trials.

“We’re also re-evaluating some of our decisions along the way – for example, we may have made a mistake in not having Trials behind the Season Pass paywall, which would have created more friction against free-account-recycling cheaters."

This is another controversial change that is sure to ignite some discussion. At the present time, a brand new player starts the game at 750 Power and is able to progress to the soft cap of 950 in around 10 hours.

From here it takes 4 or 5 hours to gain enough powerful gear to reach the 960 Power requirement for competing in Trials of Osiris.

This means that Bungie is essentially looking at raising the requirement for progressing a decent way into a Trials Passage by a factor of almost 7 from 15ish hours to 100hrs.

This will make it much harder to introduce new players into Trials of Osiris for the trade off of deterring people from using cheats as if they get banned there is 100hrs of boring grind between them and another shot at cheating.

The other route of deterrence of gating Trials of Osiris behind the Season Pass will have some secondary repercussions.

The Season Pass is mainly purhcased by the hardcore players of the series with the more casual audience opting for the free content.

If Trials of Osiris is locked behind the Season Pass then the amount of players participating on a regular basis will drop significantly, leading to longer queue times and more skewed matches.

The last two points presented by Aldridge are still a work in progress and it will be interesting to see which direction Bungie chooses to take.

If their new anti-cheat measures aren't watertight then there will need to be a simple frontline defense against cheaters implemented such as the 100hrs of game time or purchase of the Season Pass required to compete.

These are all just promises from Bungie though as there have been no hard date announcements on when these new systems and studio restructuring will go live, they can all be subject to change.

Bungie has stated that they still have some aces up their sleeve to combat the prevalence of cheaters within the game but choose to keep their cards close to their chest in order to stay one step ahead.