Destiny 2's 12-player fun can stay for now, but Bungie says it: 'didn’t create activities expecting a clown car of Guardians'

Update: As of 4 March, Bungie says that the over-manned activities can stay for now. In the This Week at Bungie blog, it wrote: "The big buzz around the community this week has been players finding out a way to cram four fireteams in activities meant for one. We’ve been watching the 12-player raid hype and are glad you’re enjoying yourselves. We aren’t rushing out a fix for this and it’s totally fine if you want to try it out and have some fun. " 

So that's pretty much a free pass to go nuts. However, the same post adds: "Just keep in mind that we didn’t create these activities expecting a clown car of Guardians to roll up, so you may experience some weirdness. We are planning on fixing this before Grandmaster Nightfall's begin on March 16, but you are free to party up until the fix goes live. "

Original story: It's turning into quite the day for hilarious Destiny 2 matchmaking exploits. Hot on the heels of the Trials fixing emblem fiasco comes word of a somewhat more wholesome glitch. This one enables players to queue into certain PvE activities, including raids, with double the amount of players normally possible. In the case of raids, that means 12 guardians clapping alien cheeks simultaneously. As you can imagine, it makes encounters both much easier and hilariously chaotic.

Pulling off the glitch is relatively simple, but will likely require some trial and error to get the timing down. Here's how, using a raid as an example:

  • The normal maximum number of players for a raid is six, so first assemble two fireteams in orbit, one with five players and the other with seven. Ideally both fireteam leaders will be located as near as possible geographically.
  • The leader of the larger fireteam clicks to join the smaller team, either using the join friend text chat function or via the in-game roster. 
  • They will now have a message asking if they want to bring their current fireteam with them. Don't click it yet.
  • The leader of the smaller fireteam now launches the activity. As the timer hits two seconds, let the leader of the bigger fireteam know via voice chat.
  • The leader of the bigger fireteam clicks 'Yes, bring them with me', and if you've got the timing right you'll load in with a 12-player team.

The ability to match more players than should be allowed into activities has been doing the rounds since earlier in the month, but now that several content creators have made videos explaining how to do it, I imagine Bungie may address the issue. From the tweet below, community manager Dylan 'dmg04' Gaffner is well aware. 

Or perhaps Bungie will just leave it as it is. Unlike the Trials exploit, these over-manned activities aren't really hurting anyone, barring making it slightly easier to complete content that already wasn't particularly tricky. And who knows, if the community continues to rave about how much fun they're having with them, perhaps Bungie will be inspired to make a 12-player seasonal activity at some point. Though I suspect we'll need to wait for support for the PS4 and Xbox One to be deprecated first.  

Tim Clark

With over two decades covering videogames, Tim has been there from the beginning. In his case, that meant playing Elite in 'co-op' on a BBC Micro (one player uses the movement keys, the other shoots) until his parents finally caved and bought an Amstrad CPC 6128. These days, when not steering the good ship PC Gamer, Tim spends his time complaining that all Priest mains in Hearthstone are degenerates and raiding in Destiny 2. He's almost certainly doing one of these right now. 

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