Exotic Weapon Pulled in Destiny 2 Due to Critical Exploit

Bungie announces it has disabled the Hawkmoon exotic hand cannon from all PvP activities in Destiny 2 due to what it calls a game-breaking exploit. As a live service title, Destiny 2 has had no shortage of bugs, glitches, and exploits come and go throughout its 6+ years. Some of these bugs have gone down as major events within the Destiny 2 community, such as the Laser Tag weekend when Prometheus Lens was overpowered and basically instantly melting players in the Crucible before a fix was implemented.

While the release of The Final Shape has been largely praised as some of Bungie's best work for Destiny 2, it hasn't been free of issues either. In fact, players have reported numerous bugs, including one that makes Destiny 2's new No Hesitation auto rifle useless against barrier champions. With a mod that allows it to break the barrier shield, players have discovered that firing at the champion with No Hesitation does nothing, with many pinning the issue on the weapon's unique healing rounds being interpreted by the game code differently than it should. In the meantime, Bungie has targeted another weapon which is causing major issues in the Crucible.

Since its return in Season of the Hunt, Hawkmoon has been a staple for many players thanks to its unique perks and buffs, especially with its weekly randomized appearances with Destiny 2's weekend merchant Xur. However, the exotic Hand Cannon has been dominating in the Crucible as of late, gaining the attention of Bungie, who identified a major issue with the weapon. As such, the Bungie Help social channel revealed that Hawkmoon has been disabled from Crucible activities while a game-breaking exploit is worked on.

Why is Hawkmoon Disabled in Destiny 2?
The original Bungie Help tweet remains ambiguous as to why the hand cannon has been disabled, leaving many in the comments wondering what happened. The issue stems from a combination of players using the Kinetic Holster leg mod to reload the weapon, which essentially did not cancel out Hawkmoon's unique Paracausal Shot exotic perk. This method allowed players to retain the perk permanently, basically giving them unlimited damage-boosted shots, with many in the community reporting being one-shot in the Crucible by those using this exploit.

While Bungie moved on this issue prior to the arrival of Trials of Osiris on Friday, the news came only a day after another Crucible exploit was identified. Recently, players found a massively easy way to farm free rewards by being AFK during Destiny 2 private matches. While it mainly rewarded resources like enhancement cores and glimmer, some reported that deepsight enabled weapons rarely dropped as well. Either way, Bungie quickly disabled rewards being offered for private matches, leaving many fans disappointed that a relatively harmless and player-friendly issue was removed from the game so quickly.