Destiny 2 now has BattlEye anti-cheat – here’s everything we know

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BattlEye anti-cheat software has been soft launched in Destiny 2 Season of the Lost.

Destiny 2 Warlock shooting other Guardians in Trials of Osiris Crucible
(Image credit: Bungie)

Destiny 2 anti-cheat in the form of BattlEye has finally arrive with Season of the Lost. Over the last couple of years, Destiny 2 has had horrendous issues with cheaters, especially on PC and in its Crucible PvP modes, but the soft launch of BattlEye anti-cheat should crack down on some of the hackers. While the Crucible is currently in a poor state, Bungie has assured Destiny 2 players that it is committed to improving Crucible over the coming years. In Season of the Lost alone, Destiny 2 players will benefit from not only BattlEye anti-cheat, but also a Trials of Osiris refresh that emphasises winning, regardless of if you go flawless or not.

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How BattlEye anti-cheat is being added to Destiny 2

In a tweet, Bungie confirmed that their partnership with BattlEye will soft launch in Season 15. The soft launch means that BattlEye anti-cheat is being implemented for a small portion of the Destiny 2 playerbase to test its effectiveness before going into full, widespread implementation in the future. Senior Editor at The Verge, Tom Warren, confirmed that Bungie has also been testing BattlEye anti-cheat internally for months. Destiny 2 players might not notice an immediate reduction in Crucible cheaters as a result of BattlEye, so expectations should be tempered accordingly. In terms of the installation of BattlEye anti-cheat, Destiny 2 players will have to do nothing as the software runs in the background and only when Destiny 2 is running. Although, Bungie have warned that some players may notice a slightly increased initial start-up time for Destiny 2 and that frames and performance may drop a little.

Cheating has been a serious pain point for the Destiny 2 community, with wild hacks such as flying, infinite self-resurrections, and fully automatic, infinite ammo heavy weapons going unchecked and players using them facing no punishments. This has only contributed to the growing feeling of neglect felt by much of the Destiny 2 PvP community. However, Bungie’s more recent efforts to crack down on cheaters, including shutting down a cheating service in 2020, and currently teaming up with Ubisoft to bring down another cheat seller. The news of Destiny 2 getting BattlEye anti-cheat software is another step in the right direction and is a huge relief for the Crucible community.

What is BattlEye anti-cheat?

BattlEye is a type of anti-cheat software that detects hacks, hunts down players that use them, and administers a ban to keep those players out of the game. BattlEye started off as third-party anti-cheat software for Battlefield Vietnam in late 2004. In the last 17 years, it has proven to be hugely successful, and it is used by many other competitive shooter franchises, including Fortnite, PUBG, and Rainbow Six Siege.

Destiny 2 Crucible will be getting more than just anti-cheat

Recently, Joe Blackburn, Assistant Game Director for Destiny 2, took to Twitter to discuss some changes and new features coming to Crucible over the next few seasons. Season of the Lost is already bringing out a Trials of Osiris revamp and a fix for third-person peaking with emotes and Swords.

Beyond the Witch Queen expansion, Season 16 will see two vaulted Destiny 2 maps return in the updated engine. Season 17 will see the first new Crucible map for Destiny 2 in over two years, and Season 18 will bring a remastered Destiny 1 map. Blackburn also revealed that 2022 could see Rift, a classic capture-the-flag-style mode from Destiny 1, being added to Destiny 2, as well as three other new modes. Blackburn explained that even more improvements and big changes are on the horizon but still a long way off as much of 2021 was spent building up Crucible development teams at Bungie for new maps and modes in the Crucible.

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Will Sawyer
Will Sawyer
Guides Editor, GamesRadar+

Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.