‘Destiny 2’ text chat disabled due to game-crashing PvP exploit

Bungie has announced that text chat in Destiny 2 has been “temporarily disabled,” after an exploit that allowed players to crash their opponent’s game in a player versus player (PvP) match was discovered.

On Saturday (June 30), Bungie announced that it was “investigating” an issue involving text chat in Destiny 2 (via PC Gamer).

Just over 10 minutes later, the company added that it has “temporarily disabled text chat on all platforms in Destiny 2 while we investigate an issue causing Weasel errors.”

We have temporarily disabled text chat on all platforms in Destiny 2 while we investigate an issue causing Weasel errors.

Stay tuned for updates. https://t.co/OCf41kjgrP

— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) July 30, 2022

As detailed on a thread within Destiny 2‘s subreddit, players shared that the exploit in question involved overloading the text chat’s character limit by pasting a certain message, which resulted in the game crashing.

Unfortunately, some members of the Destiny 2 community were using this bug to disconnect their opponent from the servers in PvP matches – which meant that the cheater was automatically awarded a win.

The replies to Bungie’s announcement include several clips demonstrating the exploit in action, which includes one video of a player appearing to use the exploit while streaming.

Apparently, there’s a text string that if you send to someone via the in-game chat will crash their game. This is happening right now on several #Destiny2 Twitch streams.

Bungie is looking into this exploit.pic.twitter.com/JJPBjpKs7B

— Destiny Bulletin (@DestinyBulletn) July 30, 2022

While it’s unclear how Bungie will punish those responsible for exploiting the chat issue, in recent months the company has taken cheating and harassment particularly seriously.

In July, Bungie sued a Twitch streamer known as MiffysWorld for routinely streaming themselves using cheats in Destiny 2, and alleged they used over 13 accounts to evade permanent punishment. The streamer was also reportedly involved in selling “presumably stolen” social media accounts, and separately threatened to “burn down” Bungie’s offices.

Back in June, Bungie won £10.7million in damages from Elite Boss Tech, a company that sold cheating software for Destiny 2. The damages were so expensive because every download of Elite Boss Tech’s cheats was counted as an individual infringement, which incurred a £1588 fine for every single one of the cheat’s 6765 downloads.

In other gaming news, the Indonesian government has shared that Steam may “reopen” in the country soon, after new regulations caused most major game launchers to be blocked in the country.