Destiny Player Loses Characters During Share Play

This is truly heartbreaking. An 11 year old kid who has been playing Destiny for over 2 months lost at least 80% of his progress. He had 3 profiles, and had 2 of them permanently deleted. One of those profiles was a level 31 Warlock, which had dozens of exotic and legendary weapons and armor tied to that profile. Another profile that was lost was a level 26 Titan. The malicious user couldn’t delete the third and final character, so he ended up loading up the profile and deleting anything valuable he could find.

The 11 year old victim walked away while all of this was happening. He didn’t even realize what was going on until the malicious user was in the middle of deleting an exotic weapon from the only profile left, which was a level 23 Hunter. In a gut-wrenching panic, he frantically hit the power button on his PS4 to end the “Share Play” session.

He quickly turned his PS4 back on and decided to remove the malicious PSN user named “KirmitTHEfrog” from his friends list. He then jumped back into the party chat with him to pretend he wasn’t upset, to make him feel like he didn’t get the best of him he said “Thank you, I didn’t really want that weapon. I didn’t really have the confidence to dismantle it, so thank you so much.”

At that time, he didn’t even realize that he lost much, much  more than just a single exotic weapon. As soon as he was finished confronting “KirmitTHEfrog”, he disconnected the party chat and began to load his Destiny game to see if any other damage was done. While the game was still loading, he began crying. He wasn’t crying from his profiles being deleted, but because he was tricked into having an exotic weapon deleted.

While he was still sobbing, Destiny finally finished loading to the profile select screen. You could begin hearing him cry louder, saying “no” over and over again as if he just heard news of a death in the family. He was truly heartbroken. The damage was already done, and he felt completely helpless to do anything about it. “KirmitTHEfrog” got the best of him.

The kid complained directly to Bungie. They basically told him to not trust strangers and they made a public announcement to the Destiny community about the dangers of using Share Play:

“Please be careful out there, kids. Bungie has some ideas for how we can make regrettable deletions like these less permanent. While we plan the right course of action (and build out new game features), protect your Guardians from sleazy online jerks – or dogs that step on your controller.”

Hopefully Bungie will do something substantial to address this. There will most likely be “copycats” out there, hoping to claim a victim of their own. This is why we can’t have nice things I guess. It will only be a matter of time before Sony puts an end to “Share Play” or puts serious limitations on it.

What caused the kid to risk his Destiny account using Share Play you ask? Well, he is very young and naive for starters. He was told that there was a “glitch” to make his characters level up instantly. He was told that the glitch was “complicated” and KirmitTHEfrog offered to do it for him using Share Play. He agreed, and the rest is history. This type of “hack” is called “social engineering”. It’s where you use charm and wit to trick your victim into giving you access to something valuable.

Things like this happen frequently, but this is the first time I have heard of the “Share Play” feature being used as a destructive tool. Could you imagine what other damage could be done through Share Play? Can DLC be purchased through Share Play? I certainly hope not, but it could be possible if there is an “in-game store”. I hope that Sony or game developers can put restrictions on what Share Play can control.

Let this be lesson to all of you though. Think extra hard before trusting a stranger with something that you value. If you might cry without it, then don’t let a stranger touch it. That sounds kinda dirty when you say it that way, but hopefully you get what I mean.