The Real Reason Destiny 2 Chat Was Shut Off

Exploits are an inevitability in gaming. No matter how hard a developer tries to stifle opportunistic gamers, it's highly unlikely that every unfair advantage will patched over. For the most part, exploits usually come down to banned game moves or a weird meta that players can use to their advantage. But every now and then, these exploits cross the line between cheesy and flat-out game breaking. Such is the case of a particularly nasty glitch that was recently discovered in Bungie's "Destiny 2."

One day into the weekend-only Trials of Osiris event, many "Destiny 2" players complained about a glitch in which their entire game would crash if certain strings of words were typed into the in-game text chat. An example of this was shown on the Destiny Bulletin Twitter page, where "Destiny 2" player Ritz types some words into chat, while playing with friends, to see if the exploit is real. Sure enough, the video shows Ritz's entire game crash after using the in-game text chat function, confirming the exploit's existence (though Ritz later clarified the video doesn't show the entire text string). Bungie took note of this and temporarily shut down in-game text chat in order to further investigate the issue.

Following Bungie entirely shutting down the ability to chat in-game using text, the developer announced on August 1 that "Destiny 2" would be undergoing maintenance in preparation for a hotfix that would launch on August 2. The announcement, however, did not address whether or not the hotfix would patch the in-game text issue crashing players' games. That said, considering the severity of the issue, it can only be assumed that Bungie would want to resolve the issue immediately. Of course, previously, glitches that ruined the end of a season stuck around longer than players would've liked. As of the writing of this article, Bungie is beginning maintenance on "Destiny 2," ahead of Hotfix 4.1.5.2.

The text-based mishap in "Destiny 2" is only the latest of similar exploits to make the media rounds. Just months ago, Amazon's "New World" MMO was similarly the subject of a highly unfortunate HTML glitch. After certain text strings were entered into the in-game chat, players' screens became flooded with images and sometimes even crashed the game if unsuspecting players hovered over a link. That said, while things are looking really bad for Amazon's "New World," hopefully this is nothing more than a hiccup for "Destiny 2."