How Bungie's forum rules have led to game-breaking exploit being in two games for 3 years and counting

Game-breaking rapid-fire cheat/exploit was in Destiny 1, throughout the years Bungie did nothing to fix it or to fight it. Let's take a close look and find out why.

There were numerous threads on Bungie.net about these cheaters using modded controllers to fire their weapons way faster than game allows. 

Here are some old examples of this in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ezJd-CeoZY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLTdbXIUNDc

What Bungie did in response to this? Nothing. Cheaters were not banned (you can check that by looking up videos with D1 rapid-fire cheaters and then checking their stats), exploit was not fixed. Threads were ignored or even deleted, more on that later.

What is rapid fire cheat?

Here is the video on how it works without macros:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmJ5Zjj6HI0

Now you have basic understanding.

Here is how it works with marcos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8JhFyIi9Vc

On PS4 people use macros with the help of modded controllers or special adapters, they allow them to rapid-fire their guns with any desired RPM using this exploit with a single trigger press. There could also be some other similar exploit in the wild.

As you can see, this exploit is also present in Destiny 2.

Here are some examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59i9IDTE674

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlXDm3epMYg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbJzcOGGWwA

People frequently seem to confuse this with network manipulation, reason being is that when a weapon fires way faster than it's intended fire-rate the game goes haywire and starts to teleport the rapid-firing player around the place, also stops registering damage correctly.

With Destiny 2's 4v4 PvP and longer TTK rapid-fire became more effective and more noticeable.

With time and publicity devices with macro functionality that enable this cheat have also became more available and prevalent, mainly because they also offer ability to plug in any controller to any console or to use mouse and keyboard with your console. 

Smart cheaters use rapid-fire on SMGs and sidearms, because they kill really fast anyway and it is very inconclusive from victim's POV if this was a cheat.

HC's and MIDA can also shoot faster with rapid-fire. Probably almost any gun can.

"Dumb" cheaters will crank rapid-fire to 11 and it will be very noticeable, like infamous Clay_is_clutch

Clay_is_clutch is kind of a cheating superstar in Destiny community, as you can see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3P8nz0-NnU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzrRx2QAvy8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sMmoy2DBxk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SQ2LCSZqoI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aXHih58opA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1QZYJcCtSQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlXDm3epMYg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWEcL9bpvLo

This is direct result of Bungie sweeping their problems under the rug, completely not listening their community, and deleting forum and Reddit posts both about cheating and individual cheaters.

Yes, your read it correctly. It is against the rules on Bungie.net forums to talk about individual cheaters and cheating in general. Destiny Reddit also enforces similar rules.

Almost 3 months ago I have reported 4 rapid-fire cheaters, these were the people, who, like Clay have many videos on YouTube with them in action from the victim's point of view. I used report form on Bungie site, I have provided link to a carnage report and the recording of the match, on each recording they killed me in 0.1 second with Nightshade, Vigilance Wing, Last Hope or Darkest Before. Very blatant.

Here are some examples of them in action both from my point of view and from POV of other players:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OjqazlI4VM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59i9IDTE674

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNSb3Rwkhu0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PSPAwTNrjo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhaLkXAGMi0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbJzcOGGWwA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sMmoy2DBxk

None of them was banned.

You can check this by going to their profile on looking at their gear level (When people get banned their light level goes down, even when they have high light level gear equipped) and recent games played:

https://destinytracker.com/d2/profile/psn/XXVinzmanXX

https://destinytracker.com/d2/profile/psn/Mo_Lester_No1

https://destinytracker.com/d2/profile/psn/rustam7626

https://destinytracker.com/d2/profile/psn/colonel-andrian

Now you can see the picture: report system does not work at all and players can't talk about individual cheaters both on Bungie.net and on Reddit. Players also can't talk about cheating at all, even about fighting it on Bungie.net, more on that later.

But wait, somebody did get banned! It was that infamous cheater superstar Clay_is_Clutch!

How did it happened? Well, a popular Destiny YouTuber made a video about it, because he happened to match Clay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEY5ME7Vs20

But nothing happened after this, fed up, YouTuber made another video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIAgcoeAcE

And after all these years of cheating Clay_is_Clutch was finally banned, here, check his power level and compare it level of his armor, it confirms that he was banned:

https://destinytracker.com/d2/profile/psn/Clay_is_Clutch

As you can see, the only way get a cheater banned in Bungie's game is by talking about him and talking really loud, at least 100k subscribers loud, also keep in mind that with "only" 100k you'll have to talk two times.

And don't forget that talking about cheaters and cheating is forbidden on any community platforms related to Destiny!

So, it took over three years for Bungie to ban infamous cheater Clay. It got to a point of popular YouTuber making two videos on him for Bungie to do something.

What about normal players who don't have a YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands subscribers?

Normal players can hope for nothing, as you can see in my example.

Cheaters don't get banned by Bungie, Clay was an exception to this rule.

Now, if blatant cheaters don't get banned, by saying blatant cheaters i mean, people who kill you in 0.1 second with Last Hope or Vigilance Wing, people who have multiple YouTube videos of them killing different players like that, from different countries with different connections.

Then what will Bungie do about "smart" cheaters, who will only use rapid-fire sparingly to decrease the time to kill but to be not too noticeable on video.

I guess the answer is absolutely nothing.

Everything will be made much, much worse with the release of Ranked Competitive PvP on May 8th.

Skill-based matchmaking will make sure that decent players will always have someone shady to play against or with in almost every game.

Of course if they can't beat them, they will join them, high-level players on console frequently have MKB adapters or CronusMAX to connect Xbox Elite controller to their PS4. These devices offer build-in macros functionality. When frequently playing against rapid-fire cheaters, these players, seeing that there is no penalty, will be forced to use it themselves. It's safe to say that the amount of rapid-fire cheaters will only increase.

It is really baffling to me that Bungie choose to release Ranked with this exploit in the wild.

But actually they don't, if they listen to someone, it will only be an opinion of popular YouTuber or streamer. As you can see by this example of rampant cheating with game-breaking exploit that was never fixed, they don't listen to their actual community.

But let me show just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

On May 1st I made a thread about cheaters in Destiny 2 PvP using this game-breaking rapid-fire exploit, I made it because Ranked play is coming on May 8th, yet Bungie seem to don't care about this exploit.

Of course I did not provided any links to YouTube videos and did not mention PSN IDs of cheaters, because if I did, the thread would be deleted by mods, as many other before it. I feel like great majority of players stop asking to remove this exploit from the game after their first thread is deleted. I know I did, initially.

Here is how the thread looked like on May 3th:

Here is much bigger, full page screenshot:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ONSA2nCN-nywESSg8RP139GzCfG1lJL/view

As you can see by the amount of likes and with over 300 messages, PvP community really wants working report system, cheaters actually getting banned and game-breaking exploits fixed!

On May 3th, when thread was up for two days and had almost 200 likes, in hopes of finally raising more awareness to this problem and Bungie finally listening to their community I tweeted a link to this thread to every Bungie developer I know, here is one example:

Result was imminent, thread got deleted:

Coincidence? Let's think.

This the rule in Code of Conduct:

Here it is explained:

As you can see, if we use Bungie's description, then the rapid-fire exploit is a glitch, it could be replicated by hand, just in not that severe form as with macros, so discussing it must be permitted.

The thread was up for 2 days and only got deleted after I tweeted it to every Bungie developer I know.

Community did not discussed how to cheat, opposite was happening: players practically begged Bungie to start banning cheaters and to finally fix the game-breaking exploit that was in their game for 3 years!

Bungie's response was to sweep it under the rug, as always.

Think again long and hard when you hear Bungie talking about listening to their community.

Here is fun bit! Let's look at how another developer under the same publisher operates, when community asks him to fix game-breaking exploit of the very same nature:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackops3/comments/4d97eg/can_treyarch_please_fix_the_brecci_double_tap/

TFlamez is actually a Treyarch developer:

Bungie may say that they listen to the community, but actually they do not. It's just cute words to promote their game. They do occasionally interact with community, all in service of an ulterior motive of promoting their game, it looks like this: Bungie cling to random personal opinions of popular streamers or YouTubers, because these opinions are widely known, this allows them to put on a show that looks like they listen to community. In reality they have pretty efficient bureaucratic apparatus on community forums which makes sure that nothing important comes trough. That actual players cannot make their voice heard. This has led to a game-breaking exploit being in the game for it's whole life-span and even successfully transferring to their next game, without getting fixed, even though great many players have spoken about it, with even more players encountering it in the wild without speaking about it, and who knows how many more players encountering it without even being aware what it is and that it should be reported and spoken about. But even if they where to report it, they would be unpleasantly surprised to know that report system does not work, and if they were to complain about cheaters not getting banned and report system not working, they would face the aforementioned bureaucratic apparatus which would act to silence them.