Destiny 2’s PC Beta Included A Legal Aim Bot

Despite the overall lack of content, last week’s Destiny 2 PC beta seemed to go off without a hitch – minus the fact that Bungie killed off Fraps support in the middle of my benchmarking. I spent hours testing out and benchmarking the beta, and really, there was no bad taste left in my mouth afterwards. To me, Bungie is delivering on its promise of making Destiny 2 on the PC the de facto version to play.

Well, that is if a glaring bug gets sorted out in time for release; one that hasn’t been getting a ton of airtime (but should). As hard as it might be to believe, Bungie decided to enable aim assist for players choosing to play Destiny 2 with a gamepad. Doing so automatically makes the PvP landscape unfair, and it introduces the exact same issue that prevents the game from being cross-play between PC and consoles. Aim-assist is the only thing that could make someone play better with a gamepad over a mouse and keyboard.

Ultimately, the crux of this issue is: Bungie’s giving players a legal aim bot.

At least in the case of the beta last week, this design choice led to a major flaw: simply having a gamepad plugged in (or emulating a gamepad) would enable aim-assist system-wide, allowing mouse users to gain a serious advantage. Don’t believe me? Check out this video:

Because this is such a major issue, one redditor posted a how-to guide before the beta ended, telling everyone how to enable aim-assist on M+KB. The post, which is now deleted, was ultimately made in jest, acting more as a beacon to get the word about this issue out. After all, cheating in a beta isn’t exactly a prison-worthy crime.

But what’s baffling to me is, as of the time of writing, I have not seen Bungie comment on this issue. It’s a severe enough issue to “assume” that Bungie will fix it in time for launch (October 24), but the complete silence is a little concerning. The “This Week At Bungie” blog post last week didn’t touch on the issue at all, despite being published after the beta had completed. I’ve looked at Twitter accounts of integral Bungie and Destiny 2 people, and still nothing.

Maybe this week’s TWAB will tackle it, and hopefully so. A design like this is one that would prevent PC gamers from even jumping into PvP, unless they want to take advantage of the bug. Cheating on the PC is bad enough; Bungie doesn’t need to make it worse by giving people a legal aim bot.