By and large the Destiny community can be a welcoming group. It’s true that there are Destiny elitists out there, who exclude players for not owning a particular weapon or having a high K/D, but there are people who are willing to accept any and all that share a love for Bungie’s new game. Unfortunately, we aren’t here to talk about those people.
This week, Destiny fans were excited to learn that the Bungie Bounty was making a comeback. During the Bungie Bounty, gamers are tasked with defeating a specific PvP player, or group of players, in exchange for a very rare emblem. However, Bungie sets the Bungie Bounty up to be tough, oftentimes calling upon the best of the best in PvP, like friend of the site TripleWRECK, to see if they can go a full hour (or two) without losing a match.
For this latest version, Bungie selected the Dames of Destiny clan and put a bounty on their Guardians’ heads. The Dames of Destiny, like any clan, have a strong following, and so Bungie felt it would be a good piece of cross marketing to feature their PvP battles online.
However, while the Bungie Bounty is meant to be in good fun, this particular event was not. Numerous Destiny players flooded the live Twitch chat with hate speech and even sent the Dames of Destiny clan members private messages that were equally abusive.
One Destiny player even took things a step further by joining the fireteam post-Bungie Bounty and let’s just say he wasn’t very kind. What’s worse is that Bungie Community Managers Deej and Cozmo, who just joined the Bungie team, were present in the fireteam at the time.
Obviously, Bungie does not want to start a witch-hunt by signaling out any who participated in the verbal abuse, but it’s worth calling attention to the incident regardless. Though many may not think twice about female gamers, there are still plenty who think that they should not be playing games at all, as evidenced by the Bungie Bounty chat. However, voicing an opinion and participating in verbal abuse are not one in the same.
Luckily, there are plenty more friendly faces amongst the Destiny community that are not just welcoming but helpful. In fact, there are full subreddits dedicated to Destiny Sherpas, which are high-level players that help newbies through any of the more challenging experiences, like the raids or Trials of Osiris. These players exist as the antithesis to the abusers, and have presumably helped the Destiny community grow.