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Destiny 2’s Gambit mode is punishing players who quit during matchmaking

Destiny 2 players who drop out of matchmaking queues are facing punishments as if they'd quit the game itself

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Destiny 2 players are at risk of being banned from competitive PvP activities if they quit out of the game during matchmaking. A player took to Reddit to share their experiences after they were denied entry to the game’s Gambit mode yesterday.

The player, Nuffy76, says that they “just backed out [of] a couple [of] Gambit matches while matchmaking cause it was taking too long.” Since then, they’ve been unable to join the game mode, being met with a matchmaking error that reads “you left a Gambit match before it was complete. Quitting Gambit matches negatively impacts the game for other players.”

To clarify this, Nuffy says that they quit out of the game before matchmaking (i.e. before the game itself had actually started). This is something that our resident Destiny-buff Rich tells me is relatively common practice, particularly if you’re playing on your own and realise you’ve been matched against a ‘four-stack’ – four players playing together, who are likely to be far more coordinated than a group of internet strangers.

Further down the thread, Nuffy says that they backed out of “three matchmaking sessions” before being met with the penalty message for both Gambit and Crucible queues. Since the initial post, a few other players have commented saying they’ve been met with similar issues.

That post has warranted a reply from Destiny 2 community manager Cozmo, who says that he’s “looking into this now.” That implies that this is a bug, rather than a more aggressive penalty system implemented by Bungie, but we’re yet to get wind of any progress. We’ve reached out to Activision, and are in the process of clarifying what steps have been taken, but for now, it might be best to avoid dropping out of matchmaking altogether.