An emblem that is meant to be a free gift to the Destiny 2 community from Bungie, the developers of the game, was found by dataminers, who then spoiled the emblem and started selling the code online. This is not the first time there have been datamined leaks and spoilers about Destiny 2 content released into the community, and it is clearly striking a nerve that it continues to happen. When hacking and cheating in the game grew to a high point in the first half of 2020, Bungie threatened legal action to take a firm stance on cheating and hacking in their game.
Destiny 2 is an online-only multiplayer first-person shooter that was originally released in 2017. Although players initially had to buy the game to play when it was first released by Activision, when Bungie obtained publishing rights to the franchise it became a free-to-play game with premium expansions. Players are Guardians, defending the Last City of humanity in the solar system against attacks. Players can customize their Guardian look and playstyle and play the story, co-op missions, and PVP modes by themselves or with friends. The game is currently on its 14th season with five major expansions, Beyond Light being the most recent. Bungie is currently working on the next big expansion, The Witch Queen, set for release in 2022.
For its 30th anniversary, Bungie is gifting gamers a new emblem as a free community gift on Bungie Day next month (via Game Informer). However, hackers who datamined the game discovered the emblem and not only spoiled the content, but are selling the emblem to players. The emblem is a Spicy Ramen Coupon. Bungie is urging players not to spend money on a new emblem that they will receive for free. This is not even the first time this year that Bungie has dealt with leaks. A month before Season 14 released for the game, the release date and a significant amount of information regarding the season leaked online.
As evident in the tweet from Bungie's senior community manager, the developers really want dataminers to stop spoiling content and start being respectful. Game Informer also referenced a massive leak that occurred recently regarding the current ongoing storyline, but it opted out of reporting and covering the leaks out of respect to the creative team. Although the hacking has not stopped, Bungie has not been afraid of fighting this uphill battle to preserve and protect their community.
Community is essential to the life of a video game. As long as interest in a game continues post-launch, and there is a decent-size community of faithful players, developers will continue working on improving and, possibly, adding content to the game. This is a big reason the Bungie team decided to avoid planning a sequel Destiny game and continue Destiny 2 with new expansions. Dataminers/hackers and cheaters are disrupting the community with these hacks and selling off codes that are potentially going to be free. Hopefully the developers can find a way to curtail this issue soon.
Source: Game Informer, dmg04/Twitter