Destiny 2's Trials of Osiris mode has been disabled because of a match fixing ring
Destiny 2's competitive PVP mode, Trials Of Osiris, has been put on hold once more, after a community effort found a way to farm free flawless cards—reaching seven wins without taking a loss—using a mix of character-switching, dice-rolls, and a good old fashioned secret code.
The exploit is explained above by YouTuber Lunarated, who noticed that he was getting a lot of free wins against fireteams using the Hakke emblem. A little bit of digging later, and it became clear that there was a massive community exploit going on in the China/Hong Kong region, using Hakke banners as a signifier that you were involved in a widespread match-fixing ring.
Here's how it works. A team of three queues for Trials using burner characters, with two members using Hakke emblems to communicate intent. If you queue against another team using normal emblems, back out—you don't care about eating a loss on this character, so you can take the hit.
Things get interesting when you match against another Hakke team, however. At that point, a representative from each team would message each other on Steam, and roll off (Steam lets you roll a virtual dice in chat). The winners would switch to their mains, and then the losers would back out of the game. Thus, the winners would mark a win on their main character's Trials cards, while the other team (still on their burners) shrug off the loss.
Using this method, Hakke teams can eventually reach seven wins on their main characters, while only taking losses on their burners. This guarantees a flawless completion, and thus access to the Lighthouse and the mode's top rewards.
It's already strange enough that Destiny 2 would let you rejoin a Trials match on a different character. But it's incredible to see the community take that and use it to create an entire secret society of match-fixing. The exploit appears to have roots in China and Hong Kong, but has now spread worldwide—with one analytics report finding that nearly half of all Trials competitors have gone flawless with minimal kills.
According to our data, nearly 50% of the players entering Trials went flawless on PC this week. Seems a bit high, so we looked into it.It turns out that of the 23,661 flawless PC players so far, 11,281 (48%) have 0 kills this week. 16,300 (69%, nice) have 5 or less.... pic.twitter.com/MMMFHZcMetFebruary 28, 2021
So, this weekend, Bungie chose to cancel the remainder of this week's Trials weekend—though did re-enable the Lighthouse for players with flawless cards, legitimate or not. The developer has yet to make an official statement on the exploit, nor said if Trials will return on Friday.
Secret exploit societies are only the latest issue to hit Destiny 2's competitive PVP mode on PC. Previous Trials weekends have been plagued with cheaters, or else cancelled at the last minute due to invisible Titans.