On Thursday, a Redditor named DeafSpaceWizardry shared the story of a Destiny PvP experience that, he claimed, ended in his being hacked and having his Thorn dismantled by an antagonistic player. The content of the original post has been deleted – as has the OP’s account – but the details were archived in a GameRant article that broke the story. As it turns out, DeafSpaceWizardry’s problems were not caused by another player, but by his own actions.
Before Bungie’s newest Community Manager responded to the story, both the Reddit post and GameRant article spread like wildfire in the Destiny community. Rumors of “bounty locking” resurfaced, with Redditor Fendumino claiming to have gained access to other players’ inventories. Some players, unconfident in Bungie’s attempts to respond to the issue, suggested hacking one of the Destiny Community Managers to gain attention. Fears rose, with players questioning whether disappeared items – and even characters – were lost to griefers with knowledge of the exploit.
However, Bungie’s investigation of DeafSpaceWizardry’s claims turned up no evidence that his account had been compromised. Instead, the Destiny developer stated, the player accidentally dismantled his own Thorn by trying to break down a different weapon while using an inventory management app, such as the Destiny Companion App. Bungie also stressed: “No items were dismantled via the Bungie.net API, nor is this possible” [emphasis mine].
This hasn’t stopped Destiny players from accusing Bungie of concealing potential exploits and condemning the developer for not making more prominent statements regarding the inventory management conflict. For now, however, it seems the problem in Destiny exotic disappearances lies somewhere between the screen and the controller.
