Destiny 2 anti-cheat system coming next season, Bungie says

Destiny 2 is finally getting robust anti-cheat measures in season 15.

With less than a week to go ahead of Bungie’s big Destiny Showcase on Aug. 24, the community is abuzz with potential leaks and rumors. But Bungie accidentally leaked its own answer to Destiny 2’s cheating problem. After a viral tweet and apparent confirmation from The Verge’s Tom Warren, Bungie spilled the beans on its partnership with BattlEye, saying it will “soft launch” a partnership with the developer in Destiny 2’s next season.

For those unfamiliar with BattlEye, it’s one of the biggest anti-cheat systems on the market, and prevents players from altering the game to give themselves an advantage. Some of the world’s biggest multiplayer games — Fortnite, PUBG, Rainbow Six: Siege — use some form of BattlEye already (sometimes paired with an additional anti-cheat software). BattlEye runs alongside the game you’re playing (if on PC) and will shut your game down if you try to disable it.

Bungie told Polygon that it’s filed new lawsuits against Destiny 2 cheat developers this week.

“We also filed three lawsuits against cheat makers [on Wednesday] — Lavicheats, Veterancheats, and Wallhax aka EliteBossTech, in addition to existing litigation against Ring-1 and Aimjunkies, so we’re taking steps internally and externally to try and level the playing field for our players,” a Bungie spokesperson said. Bungie won a previous lawsuit against GatorCheats.

Bungie has had a major cheating problem on PC since Destiny 2 moved off of Battle.net when it the studio separated from Activision Blizzard. And once Bungie reimplemented the highly competitive Trials of Osiris mode last year, cheating skyrocketed on all platforms. While the studio has sued other cheaters in the past, the game largely operates off its own auto-ban detection and a manual ban system, where players report cheaters and Bungie investigates.

The addition of BattlEye should help calm the game’s current wave of cheaters, although it won’t eliminate cheating altogether. Players will learn more about Bungie’s implementation of BattlEye — alongside a Trials of Osiris rework — during the Destiny Showcase on Tuesday.