Destiny 2 players abuse chat to crash games, Bungie steps in

Bungie was deactivated over the weekend destiny 2‘s in-game text chat across all platforms after trolls discovered a way to use it to crash other players’ games. Now the chat still stays off and Bungie hasn’t provided an ETA for the return.

On Saturday I went online to play something destiny 2 and was hit with a small message letting me know that in-game text chat has been temporarily disabled on all platforms. I didn’t think much of it as I mostly play on Xbox Series X and don’t really use text chat. But it turns out that a nasty and simple exploit has been discovered in Bungie’s online sci-fi shooter, and to prevent players from abusing it, Bungie has disabled text chat entirely.

The exploit, if executed correctly, allows a troll to crash someone else’s game (or their own game) simply by typing in a specific text string. An example of this can be seen in a video clip uploaded on July 30 through destiny 2 player Ritz. (It should be noted The text seen in the video is not complete what is required for the exploit to trigger.)

According to some reports, players experienced crashes when playing online multiplayer as these areas have public text chat and were vulnerable to this particular exploit. Shortly after its discovery, players began sharing and reporting clips of the exploit online, prompting Bungie to quickly disable all text chat destiny 2 on all platforms. Bungie confirmed this on his Twitter account on July 30.

“We have temporarily disabled text chat on all platforms destiny 2 while we investigate an issue causing Weasel errors,” Bungie tweeted. “Stay tuned in for updates.”

Bungie has a hotfix scheduled to go live tomorrow after some maintenance today, but there was no confirmation from the developers if this exploit will be fixed in this upcoming patch. kotaku has been in touch with Bungie about the exploit and if there is any news on when players can expect a fix and if text chat will be re-enabled.