Update, October 26: Bungie have acknowledged that some players have been banned from Destiny 2 incorrectly, and that those bans have been overturned.
In an update issued below their initial statement on player bans, Bungie say that some players have been banned by mistake, and that punishments are being overturned.
The brief statement reads “As part of our ban review process, we have identified a group of players who were banned in error. Those players have been unbanned. The bans were not related to the third-party applications listed above [which include Discord and OBS among others – you can read the full statement below]. We will continue to review the process we use to ensure a fun and fair game.”
It’s not clear exactly how many players were banned incorrectly. One Reddit user has discovered that if you’ve been incorrectly banned, you can refund your copy of Destiny 2 rather than issuing a chargeback through Battle.net.
Update, October 25:Bungie have issued a new statement clarifying their policies regarding Destiny 2 bans on PC.
Rumblings have been going around since Destiny 2’s PC launch about some overzealous bans from Bungie, particularly those targeting third-party overlays ranging from OBS to Fraps. PC project lead David Shaw claimed on Twitter that this was just “internet BS,” today Bungie have made a moreofficial statementabout their bans and security systems.
Day one saw approximately 400 players banned on the new PC version, and Bungie confirm that every single one of these bans came after a manual investigation, stating that the game won’t hand out those bans automatically.
Those bans were “applied to players who were using tools that pose a threat to the shared ecosystem of the game,” and had nothing to do with overlays and performance tools, say Bungie. They specifically call out Discord, Xsplit, OBS, and RTSS as the types of programs that have no effect on the bans.
They also say that four bans initially issued during the PC beta have been overturned, so reports of bans being permanent seem to also be misplaced. Maybe now you can breathe just a bit easier.
Original Story, October 25: If the Destiny subreddit is to be believed, hundreds of Destiny 2 players on PC are being banned for using third-party software while playing the game. According to the posts there, any software spreads an overlay on the game will get you a permanent ban – Discord, Fraps, XSPLIT, among many others.
[[{“attributes”:{},”fields”:{}}]]
Bungie contests this claim, however, David Shaw, project lead on the PC version of Destiny went to Twitter to say:
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.
— Shawctober (@ShockAndShaw) October 25, 2017
The response has been echoed through Bungie support to players trying to resolve the problem:
Players are currently listing the different changes they’d made to see if that might be the cause of the ban, like this player who rebound their movement keys to the numpad.
We have reached out to Activision to see if they can expand on what is causing all these bans.