Wednesday, October 25th 2017
"Not So Fast": Bungie Automatically Bans Destiny 2 PC Players With Overlays
Urgent message to all would-be Destiny 2 PC players: Bungie has enabled an extremely strict, no holds-barred permanent account-banning system with Destiny 2, which activates so long as you have any kind of application with process hooks / overlay features. This is true for Twitch, Discord, MSI Afterburner, OBS, XSplit, Skype, TeamSpeak, HWMon, AIDA, as well as some hardware vendor overlays such as ASUS Tweak and Corsair Link software, GeForce Experience's FPS counter... The message screen, "Not so Fast", indicates that players have been banned, without forewarning or any further explanation.
There's a meltdown going on in Bungie's official PC Support forums, where most of the threads have been started - and then added to - by banned users. In some cases, users are banned even before entering the character creation screen; some more fortunate ones can even get to thew first three minutes of the intro video. A post from a Bungie Forum moderator didn't do much to instill confidence: "In Destiny there are account restriction and bans,", Bungie moderator "Kellogs" writes. "Restrictions are only temporary but must be waiting out while bans are permanent. Please note that Bungie will not discuss or overturn account restrictions or bans."
It's interesting to note that the same moderator indicated that some apps that might be incompatible with Destiny 2 - read, all of the above - would result in the game not launching, but not on a ban. This seems to be in line with Bungies' terms and conditions on PC overlay support, but nevertheless, hasn't stopped many, many users from calling that claim an outright lie. Apparently, a not insignificant number of users have seen themselves banned, instead of a game application fail to run instance.
If you've bought a digital Battle.Net key for the game, and have been banned due to this inexcusable usage of blind banning, you may have some luck in requesting a refund directly from Blizzard support. Users who have bought a physical version fo the game, however, will see their refunds be much less likely.
Sources:
Bungie Forums, TPU Forums user @ One Moar
There's a meltdown going on in Bungie's official PC Support forums, where most of the threads have been started - and then added to - by banned users. In some cases, users are banned even before entering the character creation screen; some more fortunate ones can even get to thew first three minutes of the intro video. A post from a Bungie Forum moderator didn't do much to instill confidence: "In Destiny there are account restriction and bans,", Bungie moderator "Kellogs" writes. "Restrictions are only temporary but must be waiting out while bans are permanent. Please note that Bungie will not discuss or overturn account restrictions or bans."
86 Comments on "Not So Fast": Bungie Automatically Bans Destiny 2 PC Players With Overlays
Yet, it took "only" 5 months of complains about aimbot users for ID to finally admit that they have a cheater problem.
Though, it's not as strict and probably has a whitelist for Steam Overlay, NV Shadowplay, Twich, Teamspeak, Afterburner and other popular software, cause so far there were only few complaints from users, who also forgot or refused to mention the exact overlay they were using.
Seems like Bungie went overboard on this anticheat - the game barely came out and there are probably no aimbots or other hacks for this game yet.
so this is insanely stupid of them to do, they simply wiped most of their fcking player base lol
Lucky me i wasnt running any "ilegal" applications in the Background.
Anyways, this is messed up. If they are really serious about it, they should have the game not Launch if illegal applications are detected, not permaban accounts if a detection of illegal applications occur.
This is messed up. I cant believe i waited 2 months to Play Destiny 2 only to risk of loosing my account if my wife decides to run an illegal application while i'm away and leave it running.
I guess i'll have to check what applications are running every time i start the game.
This is messed up.
And speaking of this. Is there any way to see my FPS while ingame, since Fraps is not working!
Later EDIT:
They say Teamspeak doesnt work? How about Blizzards built into blizard launcher Team Speaker ? It would be the most idiotic Thing ever for the Blizzard Team speak to create an account ban ! This is an interesting theory since a Player who reportedly tried to Play the game on a new Laptop with nothing but the Windows installed, still got banned.
I hope my account isnt banned when i arrive at home today because i had the nerve to run fraps yesterday.
Man, they Need to fix this sh up ! Im smeling a shit Tornado on the Horizon.
I'm not sure how they even came to these decisions. They're not even trying to be sensible.
This is basically theft, what they are doing, which is a shame, because i think i will enjoy the game a lot.
www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-25-bungie-insists-its-not-banning-destiny-2-pc-players-for-using-third-party-applications
I can understand the public outcry, but facts need to be found before an actual statement can be issued to the public. I can bet that no one at Bungie got sleep last night as they scour code and logs to try and find the issue behind this. Will be interesting to see the facts unfold, as I for one spent a good 2 hours streaming to twitch using Geforce Experience last night before losing power to bad storms. Be interesting to see if I am banned when I get home from work.
This is a rookie PR mistake you expect from an indie dev, not a multi million dollar dev with one of the biggest names of the industry. If a hidden rule is violated, you warn the player, not just ban them from using the $60 piece of software they just bought from you with no recourse. Such behaviour should not be tolerated.
Hopefully someone sues the everlasting hell out of bungie and activision for this.
Plus, this would have been easily avoided if Bungie was able to accept that no anti-cheat system is perfect from the start and gave it a few days before starting banning people.
I'm not sure if this anti-cheat system was enabled during the Beta and there were no reports at that time of these things happening. There was also posting's on their website about OBS and streaming during that time.
But how are we even sure it's their anti-cheat system that is causing these bans? Issuing hasty responses without facts can be just as bad as not issuing a statement.
Who know's maybe it is a bad batch of game keys part of hardware bundles, or these keys were stolen and or obtained otherwise and they are scrubbing their system of these bad keys and that results in a ban?
Refund their garbage game en mass. They'll beg you all to come back. And then don't. That will teach the greedy assholes.
They could have done this analysis prior to starting banning people and then they could have answered any question promptly. But they chose not to.
And analysis on a Day 1 launch? No one is going to be re-active on that, all pro-active responses.
I'm also reading that bans are being lifted now from a number of users on Bungies forums.