‘Destiny 2’ PC Players Are Getting Banned, But Bungie Says It Is Not Because Of Third-Party Apps

Destiny 2 launched on the PC Tuesday with much fanfare from Bungie and Activision. The debut of the shooter on the platform was largely without incident until a wave of mass bans began hitting players. It’s not clear what is causing the bans, but the developer says it is not because of players running third-party applications with the game.

Posts in the Destiny sub-Reddit and the official Bungie forums are loaded with PC players claiming they are being banned in Destiny 2. These kind of complaints are actually common from PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players, but the difference is some PC players are stating they are getting banned even before creating a character in the game.

Some Reddit users claim using common third-party applications like Discord, Open Broadcast Software, MSI Afterburner, FRAPS, and more are causing the bans. This runs counter to a help article previously provided by Bungie that applications like these may cause compatibility issues with Destiny 2, but there is no mention of player bans.

The compatibility issue is backed up by Community Manager Cozmo23, who responded to a banned player in the Bungie forums by stating, “Third-party applications that aren’t compatible with Destiny 2 may cause the game to not run but won’t result in a ban.”

This still leaves open the question of what is the cause behind the mass player bans in Destiny 2. Bungie has not addressed the issue publicly yet beyond Cozmo23’s statement but a Reddit community post was started by the fan-run forum moderators apologizing for “inappropriately assigned bans” and referencing the statement.

No additional information is available from Bungie yet as they are likely at the beginning stages of investigating what is causing the bans. This is obviously a concern for innocent Destiny 2 players as the developer’s help article explaining restrictions and banning policies reveals bans can be applied at both the account and device level. This means a player may not play the game again from their Blizzard account or their PC. Meanwhile, those who receive a restriction will eventually gain access to Destiny 2 again after the ban expires.

Aside from the bans, some Destiny 2 players are reporting crashes while playing the game. This appears to be a hardware issue as many have shared they are using an AMD Phenom processor.

Have you been affected by the Destiny 2 PC ban wave? Sound off in the comments below.

[Featured Image by Bungie/Activision]

[Correction: The Reddit post apologizing for “inappropriately assigned bans” comes from the Destiny sub-Reddit moderators and not Bungie.]