Destiny 2 will finally penalize quitters in the Crucible

Destiny 2’s next major update arrives in just a few days, and it will introduce a long-awaited feature for PvP combatants in the Crucible: a penalty for frequent quitters.

The feature will debut in Destiny 2 update 1.1.4, Bungie announced yesterday. That patch is scheduled to go live next Tuesday, March 27.

The Crucible, the game’s player-versus-player component, offers two playlists — a high-stakes option, Competitive, and a less intense setup, Quickplay — and the penalty for quitting matches will exist only for Competitive play.

Quitting is certainly a problem across the entire Crucible, but it’s a much more dire issue when it happens in Competitive games. In that playlist, matches begin with four players per team — but if anybody leaves, the game won’t matchmake a replacement into the game. So if a game starts getting lopsided and one or more players on the losing side decide to bail, it ruins things for everyone.

Bungie is implementing a system that can temporarily ban players if it determines that they are “habitual quitters.” These temporary bans, which will last for 30 minutes, can result from “leaving a match early for any reason, from improper network settings to an idle time-out while getting the door for a food delivery,” according to Bungie. A spokesperson for the studio clarified to Polygon that the bans will apply only to the Competitive and Osiris Competitive playlists, not Crucible as a whole.

The v1.1.4 patch will also include security improvements for Crucible play. These changes, said Bungie, will “increase the speed that we can detect and punish cheaters.” The studio added that additional security updates are coming; they’re currently targeted for Destiny 2’s v1.2 update, which is scheduled to arrive in May alongside the game’s second expansion.

As usual with any patch, Bungie will take Destiny 2 offline on Tuesday to push the v1.1.4 update live. Server maintenance is set to begin at noon EDT, at which point players will no longer be able to sign in to the game. An hour later, at 1 p.m., all remaining players will be kicked out to the title screen; at that point, people will be able to start downloading the patch. The maintenance window is scheduled to end at 2 p.m.

Update: A representative for Bungie told Polygon that the temporary bans will only prevent people from playing the Competitive and Osiris Competitive playlists. We’ve edited the article to reflect this.