Update: Bungie Reverses Some Destiny 2 PC Bans, Says They Were Made In Error

Update: Bungie has added a short update note to yesterday's post clarifying its banning procedure, acknowledging that some players were mistakenly banned.:

Update: As part of our ban review process, we have identified a group of players who were banned in error. Those players have been unbanned. The bans were not related to the third-party applications listed above. We will continue to review the process we use to ensure a fun and fair game.

There's no word on how many were in the group of erroneously banned players, but Bungie remains adamant that they weren't banned for the third-party overlays that PC gamers frequently use. 

Original Story:As Destiny 2 launched on PC this week, the first release in the series on PC after skipping the platform with Destiny 1, fans were mostly happy about it. A few players, however, reported that using any sort of overlay like framecounters or streaming enhancements leads to a ban. Bungie disagrees.

As the first non-Blizzard game on Battle.net, Destiny 2 is in some uncharted waters with regard to security. On the game's subreddit, some players immediately expressed skepticism about the game's anti-cheat capabilities due to Battle.net's use, citing Overwatch's manual ban system as a reason why. Once bans on Destiny 2 started rolling out, however, players started pointing out a commonality among what they viewed as unfair bans: third party overlays.

These are used by players for any number of reasons. Some use it to access their chat programs rather than just talking to their Battle.net list. Some use it for streaming purposes, or to make sure they're maintaining a consistent framerate. By its definition, overlays inject code into the game, which can sometimes cause false flags when a game is checking its integrity against cheats.

In a statement today, Bungie denies the theory the community has been coalescing around and stated that none of the 400 bans were for using an overlay. They wrote a blog post today that included information on their banning process.

"Destiny 2 cannot automatically ban you, only Bungie can ban a player after a manual investigation," stated the developer. "Yesterday, we banned approximately 400 players on PC. Bans were applied to players who were using tools that pose a threat to the shared ecosystem of the game."

Bungie also said they are overturning four bans from the beta, but did not elaborate on why.

Users are disputing Bungie's assertion, however, claiming that they were banned for no discernible reason with the only commonality being the overlay. Some users point out that they have literally nothing installed but the game and Battle.net and still got banned. It could always be that they're not being truthful and have simply seized upon a seemingly common problem in hopes that they get swept up in a wave of unbanning. Bungie's assertion that they do not automatically ban anyone seems to throw a wrench into the overlay theory.

On Twitter, Bungie's PC lead David Shaw was decidedly blunt. "We do block programs from pushing their code into our game," he tweeted when asked about the overlays. "We don't ban for that, though. That's internet BS."

[Source: Bungie Blog]

Our Take
Bungie was smart to get out in front of this before a narrative developed. Until or unless someone can prove they got banned for an overlay, it pretty much comes down to everyone's word and hoping Bungie's banning process works as intended.