Did This Destiny 2 Clan Cheat To Beat Prestige Leviathan?

Destiny fans don’t get many opportunities to be the world’s first players to finish an objective. Bungie keeps tabs on the clans who explore new raids on Day One, and publicly congratulates the first team to claim victory, but such opportunities only arise once (maybe twice) per year. So you can imagine how angry Destiny 2 fans are after hearing the team recognized for beating Leviathan’s Prestige mode first, roughly an hour after it debuted on Wednesday, relied on a known weapon glitch.

Destiny fans have been exploring Leviathan for several weeks now, going back to the raid’s debut in September, but this week marked the first time Destiny 2 players could attempt the Prestige version. Prestige raids are harder versions of the base content. Enemies and encounters don’t change in the harder version of the raid and the stats of the loot found inside remains the same. But the loot from Prestige raids does have some cosmetic differences to reflect the wearer’s accomplishments.

Many teams were ready and waiting to dive in when the Prestige version went live on Wednesday morning and the race to become the world’s first victors was a close one. Bungie recognized Clan Redeem as the first to defeat Prestige Calus on Twitter. But it wasn’t long before accusations of cheating began to spread on social media. And there seems to be video evidence proving Clan Redeem did, in fact, rely on a glitch that gives the Wardcliff Coil, an exotic rocket launcher, infinite ammunition.

It’s not a huge shock to learn that a glitch proved useful in Destiny 2. The exploit that blocks additional enemies from spawning during Leviathan’s final encounter is so useful Bungie actually devised a means of tracking which teams were/weren’t using it during their runs. The studio even said it would confirm the first team to finish the Prestige raid hadn’t used the glitch before honoring them publicly. But the studio apparently doesn’t have an internal process to verify Clan Redeem’s use of the coil glitch. Obviously, they could watch some of the stream footage broadcast during the run. But they don’t have any hard data they could use to justify a more serious punishment. Bungie has responded to the situation by saying it would honor the first three teams to finish Prestige Leviathan, so fans “can make your own decision as to who should be celebrated.” But it sounds like that’s about as far as this is going to go, from the studio’s perspective.

Destiny 2 is currently available on PS4 and Xbox One. The game hits PC on Oct. 24.

Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more Destiny 2 news in 2017 and however long Bungie supports Destiny 2 in the years ahead.