Suing abusers and cheaters is 'good business,' Bungie says
Destiny 2 developer Bungie filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit(opens in new tab) in July against a player it alleges has a long history of cheating, creating alt accounts to evade bans, and threatening studio employees. We noted at the time that Bungie has taken «an increasingly aggressive approach» to troublemakers in recent years, and general counsel Don McGowan recently told Axios(opens in new tab) why. According to McGowan, it's good for players, and it's a good business decision, too.
«We have seen historically that bad actors will often be tolerated because the people with the skills and power to remove them do not focus their efforts there,» McGowan said. «To put it simply, we disagree. In our view, removing harassment and abuse from our community is not only the right thing to do, it is also good business.
»We believe very strongly that most people do not want to be in communities where cheating or harassment is allowed to thrive. Tolerating bad actors chases away a lot of people who would like to enjoy our products."
The discourse on social media can be rough for any developer, but Bungie faces particularly high levels of heat for its work on Destiny 2. Developers are almost constantly making adjustments to the long-running live service game to accommodate both its age and its complexity; sometimes there are problems(opens in new tab) and sometimes people are just unhappy that the meta has changed in some way that affects their favorite build, and either can lead to torrents of abuse.
And it's not just name-calling: Community manager dmg04 said on Reddit(opens in new tab) last week that Bungie has actually cut back on its public communications with players because of «real threats towards our people and our
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