The Witness is one of the hardest raid bosses in Destiny 2’s history, as is fitting for the story’s ultimate antagonist. But a Twitch streamer managed to trivialize one of his mechanics by breaking ToS, earning a slap on the wrist.
Triple Breaks, Baby
In a fourteen second clip posted to Twitter, streamer Leopard shows a solo Witness run where he’s able to pop three of the Glyphs on the Witness’s chest in less than two seconds. This is a feat that would normally be impossible, and Leopard laughs, declaring, “Triple breaks, baby”. The clip ends shortly after, and in the post text, he attributes the achievement to NordVPN.
The ensuing comments were a long line of accusations that asked if he was using network manipulation, which Leopard admitted he was, gifs of cop cars, and pinging the official Destiny 2 accounts on Twitter for comment.
Destiny’s Twitter account made a comment two hours after the clip was posted, stating, “Hey, all. Wanted to give fair warning. This breaks our ToS. We understand the desire to take on more challenging content solo, but manipulating network in an effort to gain any advantage in PvE or PvP can lead to restrictions or bans. We highly advise against doing this.”
Predictably, players were unhappy with the team’s response.
Is It Preferential Treatment?
Several comments questioned whether or not Leopard was getting preferential treatment from the Destiny 2 devs.
“This is against ToS. If this was anyone else except a streamer they would be banned. You can’t just pick and choose who gets warnings and who gets bans. Same rule for everyone,” one comment said.
“Ain’t no way he just gets away with this when others got banned without any warning ??” another remarked.
A flood of comments echoed this sentiment, which was that this was a bannable offense and it’s unacceptable that someone who so flagrantly flouted the rules should get off with just a warning. Especially since non-streamer players can’t expect the grace of a warning.
In a World Where Everything Is Fair
Popular Destiny 2 streamer Saltagreppo came out the doors swinging, stating, “The comments asking for a ban have to be some of the saddest people I’ve ever seen. A company giving a warning when you do things you shouldn’t do is a AWESOME thing, and the direction we should go! It is not smart to ban players on the fly especially for dumb stuff like this.”
But he did temper his response by adding, “That said, obviously VPNing to gain an advantage of any kind is cringe an people shouldn’t do that, but the Glyphs should still simply be fixed. Depending on where you live or your connection you can double or triple break easily without any VPN and that’s dumb anyways.”
Saltagreppo’s argument for a world where players receive warnings instead of outright bans is ideal. But beyond that, Bungie’s decision to use Leopard’s clip is a highly visible way to warn the community that, moving forward, network manipulation will be a bannable offense. Thus, in a less direct way, giving the player base the warning that Saltagreppo is advocating for.
Still, the community divide between players, streamers, and the Bungie team remains. And it’s best stated by a commentor who replied to Saltagreppo saying, “I agree with the warning before issuing a ban….and I like Lep. But this is a double standard being shown here. There’d be a lot of regular players banned straight up with no ‘fair warning’. They should give this kind of warning to infractions to everyone moving forward.”
Fingers crossed players will get the same treatment Leopard received. Or, better yet, not break Destiny 2’s ToS in the first place, especially if you’re trying to tackle Salvation’s Edge solo with a VPN.
Destiny 2 is available to play now.
Published: Jul 23, 2024 04:21 pm