Second Destiny 2 PC Ban Wave Has Some Players Crying Foul Again

Just weeks after developer Bungie erroneously banned a wave of players on Destiny 2 for PC, a new wave of bans has hit the first-person shooter. And with that, a new round of players is claiming that they were banned unjustly.

After a banwave during Destiny 2’s PC launch, numerous players claimed that they were banned not for cheating, as Bungie had claimed, but for running innocuous third-party software like Discord and Open Broadcaster Software. Bungie denied that these programs were leading to bans, saying in a blog postthat players would only be banned after manual investigation by Bungie staff. However, further investigation determined that this was wrong, and Bungie later updated the post saying it had identified “a group of players who were banned in error” whose bans were then overturned.

This week, after another round of bans, players are suspecting that the same incident might have happened again. Players caught in this latest round of bans are speculating that they’ve been flagged for using harmless third-party programs rather than cheating tools.

“I’m a programmer for another triple-A video game developer, so I have software on my machine like a kernel debugger, which I use for work,” one player wrote on Bungie’s official forums. “I mention this because the existence of such software on my computer is the only possible thing I can think of that would even remotely get my account flagged.”

“I’m using the same programs I use in every Blizzard game, every Steam game, and every Origin game,” another said. “But Destiny has banned me for (maybe?) having them open. It’s sloppy, and after the first wave of bans, people don’t trust you.”

Bungie has once again denied that third-party programs other than cheating tools are causing players to be banned.

“We looked into it,” community manager Chris “Cozmo” Shannon said on the official forums yesterday. “Our recent wave of protective security measures were reviewed extensively and all were identified as having cheat tools running multiple times.”

We’ve also received a number of tips from Destiny 2 players who say that they or their friends have been banned unfairly. It’s impossible to verify these claims—cheaters don’t often admit that they cheated—but this all feels very similar to what happened a few weeks ago.

Bungie has not yet responded to a request for more information. For now, Destiny 2 PC players should exercise caution to avoid getting caught in any banwave. A list of approved third party applications and overlays can be found here