Destiny 2 Offers Players $45 Credit Over Mistaken Cheating Bans

Destiny 2 has been cracking down on cheating in recent years, and the sci-fi shooter is now riddled with players who claim they were banned by mistake. However, it seems at least some of them may have been telling the truth: Bungie recently contacted a few players to apologize for banning them by mistake, offering them roughly $45 in premium currency to make up for the error.

As reported by The Verge’s Tom Warren, a recent email from the studio stated that a “small number” of players had their accounts “inadvertantly flagged as having tampered with game client functionality.” The email continued, “While the overwhelming majority of these detections are accurate, we discovered that in extremely rare cases this detection may be triggered through no fault of the player.”

Bungie explained that a recent audit of its cheating detection processes revealed the false positives, and it’s taken action to fix the issue. It’s unclear for how long any of the players wrongly banned for cheating were excluded from the game, but the studio is offering them 5,000 Silver to spend on emotes and ornaments in the Eververse microtransaction shop. The premium in-game currency bundles can also be spent on battle passes for upcoming seasons.

Destiny 2 has been in a constant tug-of-war with cheaters, especially in its top-tier competetive modes like Trials of Osiris, a weekly competition where players compete for some of the best loot in the game. Its recent crackdowns, which have been cheered by the community as a way to sure up the integrity of the game’s struggling PvP modes, have resulted in a number of publicized ban waves. Bungie even got a player legally banned from ever playing Destiny 2 again through a court order last month.

Some of those caught up in the cheating ban waves have been less impressed by Bungie’s efforts. The game’s subreddit, forum, and social media include frequent posts by people claiming they were wrongfully banned and criticizing the studio for the lack of transparency around its appeals process. It’s unclear if the recent “small number” of mistakes will alter the way Bungie deals with suspected cheaters. The studio did not immediately respond to a reqeust for comment.

Update 10/11/2023 2:00 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Bungie provided Kotaku with the following statement:

“We recently identified and resolved an issue that resulted in a small number of accounts being inadvertently flagged during a recent ban wave. This issue was isolated to this specific ban wave, and we have made changes to our review process to ensure this issue is not repeated. Impacted players have been notified, accounts restored, and make-goods provided.”