Destiny 2’s Desert Perpetual Raid Faces Major Cheating Scandal in Edge of Fate Expansion

Destiny 2 has recently seen a high-profile cheating incident, in the aftermath of the "Contest Mode" for its latest raid, "The Desert Perpetual", which released with the The Edge of Fate expansion. Community investigations found significant and pervasive cheating across the top-ranked teams in the raid encounter. Bungie's API data and analysis suggest that many of the teams ultimately clearing the raid while in Contest Mode were playing under intentionally manipulated game flaws.

Reports suggest that upwards of 70% of the top 100 teams in the Contest Mode raid cleared the activity using some form of cheating. Out of the 569 total Contest Mode clears, 319 (56%) were determined to be exploit-based, leaving only 250 legitimate clears. The Desert Perpetual raid has been touted as one of the hardest challenges in Destiny 2's history, where legitimate clears took top teams over 15 hours. However, many of the cheating teams completed the encounters in minutes or completed the entire raid in less than 18 minutes, so it was difficult to assess anything but foul play. 

Destiny 2’s Desert Perpetual Raid Faces Major Cheating Scandal

We noticed a few tell-tale flags that indicated these invalid clears were cheating clears. One of the more noticeable was the highly skewed kill distribution where one player on the team has over 1,500 kills while their three teammates have, in total, under 50. Cheating was also indicated by rather esoteric weapon selection, where exploiters typically used Duality and Lorentz Driver. Both of these weapons were exploited via "net-limiting", where players intentionally "throttle" their internet connection to manipulate the way the server communicates with players and their damage is registered and made very different from legitimate players.

Neither were the weapons that a player would typically use in high-level legitimate play, especially those who have obtained their clear. Also, some teams were using low-tier equipment like blue rocket launchers or class setups including five Warlocks, which are not good options for the damage demanded by the raid, which was further evidence of exploitable raids.   Very suspicious teams had players with practically no raid experience or all new accounts.

Though the rampant cheating is a huge hassle for Bungie, it’s worth mentioning that these cheats did not affect the actual “World First” race. Bungie is aware of the players racing for the world first clear, and Team Nuts achieved a world first completion in about 15 hours and 35 minutes. Contest Mode was active for 48 hours, with player power capped and certain power-enabled items limited to create a competitive field for the emblem. The Desert Perpetual raid, set in the realm of the Nine, was not forgiving and demanded coordination and contingencies. 

Bungie has confirmed that they are looking into the reports of players cheating in the Contest Mode raid race. Net-limiting and exploit-like techniques are considered a serious violation of Bungie's Terms of Service and can and will lead to a permanent account ban. The cheating event highlights issues that continue to be a concern in a competitive online gaming environment, and this is not exclusive to Destiny 2. The amount of cheating detected was so prevalent in the Community that it has raised depreciation about having a competitive nature in the game.

Written By “ Souranil Ghosh- India Today Gaming”