In Destiny 2, countless teams faced the toughest mode in the new raid The Eternal Desert
. It has now turned out that the majority of the top 100 were not fair players. Almost 70% of them are said to have been cheaters.
What kind of raid is this? On July 19, 2025, the new raid The Eternal Desert
(Eng: The Desert Perpetual) started in competition mode. In the World First race, several teams tried to finish the difficult raid as quickly as possible to memorialize themselves on a leaderboard.
However, it has now become clear that 70% of the teams in the top 100 are cheaters. According to journalist Paul Tassi on the Forbes website, many teams apparently cheated during the World First race.
Community not particularly surprised about the cheaters
How were the cheaters detected? As Tassi reports, user @aquativityy (via x.com) compiled a list showing the alleged cheaters. He also explained the evidence:
- One team member has an unbelievably high number of kills, while the rest of the team has hardly any
- Incredibly quick clear times (10-20 minutes) for sections that took other teams hours (for comparison: The currently best team took over 15 hours (Source: raidhub.io))
- Specific weapon combos (Duality and Lorentz Driver) and special armor
- New accounts that hardly have completed raids
You can find the list of cheaters as a Google Doc. The leaderboard site RaidHub has also commented on this. They explain on x.com that cheating is said to have occurred in almost 400 of the 600 runs. The leaderboards should now be finalized
.
Paul Tassi explains in his article that the big, well-known teams likely do not fall among the cheaters. This includes Team Nuts.
How is the community reacting to the many cheaters? In a Reddit thread, the community shows little surprise about the cheater report.
- Shacck691 (via Reddit) writes:
Manipulating leaderboards is nothing new.
- SenseiJae (via Reddit) thinks that gaming in general has a problem:
Online gaming is terrible nowadays. Almost every game is full of cheaters. This is especially true for you, Apex.
- _NOT_PENNYS_BOAT_ (via Reddit) does not understand why anyone would cheat at all:
I will never understand how people can find cheating fun.
Even the streamer and Destiny expert tried his hand at the new raid, wanting to win it with his team as the first. However, even though the health bar of a boss was empty, he lost: Streamer tries for years to win a new raid in Destiny 2 as the first, destroys the health bar of a boss, yet still loses
