Dear Bungie,
I’m writing because I love your game. Since the release of Destiny 1, I have enjoyed the content, gameplay, story, and grind of destiny. However, Destiny is more than just a game with entertainment value. It's a community of guardians, of players, of people. To many, including myself, it’s part social network and maybe even more - where reactions occur in real-time instead of a ‘post’ or ‘tweet’ that’s read in a feed at a later time. I have met and made friends with people I’d consider life-long friends through playing destiny and I have met people that I simply don’t understand.
This brings me to the topic at hand: toxicity, disrespect, and bullying.
We’ve all experienced it.
Whether it’s the crucible match where a player tea-bags, emotes, shoots at your lifeless guardian, and follows up with a hateful message postgame or the raid team where a player is yelled at and kicked for causing a wipe or dying one too many times - bullying in destiny is rampid. I imagine that the player population in endgame activities like Trial suffer greatly from people that shy away from playing it because of the toxicity that comes along with it.
Bullying in Destiny is simply everywhere and I personally feel defenseless to do anything about it. Moreover, I feel as though you, Bungie, as the game’s developer, doesn't do anything to moderate or police the behavior. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that you condone, support, and enable it by arming players with emotes that are used as a means of disrespecting and putting others down. More importantly, Bungie, you do not provide any in-game means of reporting bullying behavior.
Bungie - you claim in your code of conduct:
[quote]“We will remove the following content (and the users who contribute it) from our website or our games: Disrespect of any kind…”[/quote]
You claim you support people’s mental health and wellness:
[quote]“We want to share a message with everyone who’s experiencing a mental health issue: it’s okay to not be okay.”[/quote]
You claim you do not condone cyberbullying:
[quote]“Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect. Bullying isn't acceptable and shouldn't be tolerated. If you're being bullied, it's NOT your fault.”[/quote]
You even launched a mental health organization with https://guardiansmh.org/.
But… How meaningful is any of this when you do nothing about the abuse distributed within your own game?
Without providing a means of reporting behavior and consequences for partaking in the continuous disrespect, harassment, and bullying of other players - you’re a part of the problem and a far cry from what you claim on the web. Instead, your game is just another hand cannon in growing an arsenal of cyberbullying weapons.
So, Bungie, please - you need to set it up. You need to crack down on the toxicity in your game and start putting actions behind the words you write on your website. No one deserves to be bullied. People should enjoy playing Destiny, in all facets of the game, and not shamed for playing it.
-
6 RepliesYou NEVER would have survived Xbox 360 lol, bruh, moderns gamers are WAY to soft. T bagging is hardly toxic anymore, this isn’t the 2010’s. Emote? Shoot lifeless guardian? Bro… who cares? People suck. People will always suck. Some won’t tho. But you can’t change it. You want Bungie to crack down on people *emoting and bagging*? I- I have no words other than get over it and suck it up.