Destiny 2 Trials of Osiris takes another major hit as a top PvP streamer says cheaters can now crash lobbies, leading to instant suspensions.
Trials of Osiris has always been the sweaty heart of Destiny PvP. Since its original launch in 2015, the 3v3 elimination mode has built a dedicated core of players chasing flawless cards, Lighthouse trips, and high-end loot every single weekend.
Compared to those years, things look a lot more grim. Recently, Destiny 2’s overall player population has slipped below the Curse of Osiris lows, the point where Bungie once thought of shutting down the game entirely. And the mood around PvP in particular has been sliding for a while.
The wider game is still hanging on to a sizable audience across all platforms, but the trend is going one way. Steam concurrent player count has fallen from nearing a hundred thousand players during past expansions to just over ten to fifteen thousand during peak hours these days, and long-time players are vocal about bugs and a lack of real changes on the competitive PvP side.
Now the once-popular Trials of Osiris playlist is taking another punch. Updated stats from Destiny Trials Report show that last week (ending on November 11, 2025) on Javelin-4 at 56,677 players, followed by this week (ending on November 18, 2025) on The Burnout, dropping to just 34,719 players, a fall of about 39 percent in a single reset.
At the same time, another top Destiny 2 PvP streamer has stepped up with harsh words about what it feels like to queue in 2025.
Destiny 2 cheaters can now crash the entire game
The streamer in question is ZkMushroom, one of the top PvP creators for Destiny 2. In a new YouTube video titled “This is going to make me quit Destiny 2…”, ZkMushroom breaks down why he is close to walking away from Trials completely.
He says Trials population is already “super low” and claims he runs into “over like 10 cheaters every single day” he plays the mode. What pushes him over the edge is a new wave of advanced cheats that, according to him, can crash the entire lobby and trigger automatic 30-minute suspensions, including innocent players.
In one example, he describes facing a cheater who, once the match started going badly, simply crashed the game. Zk then logged back in to find a suspension timer sitting on his account. In another session, he says he loaded into a Trials match with three cheaters in the lobby, two on his own team, who could not beat the opposing hacker and crashed the match again so that nobody won.
“We got into another lobby, and there were three cheaters in the same lobby, one on the other team and I think two on my team,” ZkMushroom said in the video. “The one on the other team was pretty much unkillable, so they had a hard time with him.
“So instead of actually trying to beat him with cheats, they just decided to crash the entire game so he doesn’t win. Once again, I got another 30-minute suspension, because it doesn’t give you a chance, it doesn’t give you a warning.
“It automatically gives you a 30-minute suspension. So cheaters can pretty much prevent you from playing the game. This is really bad. They have control over what I can do in Destiny because of those cheats, and with the low population, they can keep matching you, because it’s pretty easy when no one’s playing.”
He also claims that account ban waves are not enough, arguing that cheat users can cheaply buy new Steam accounts, move expansions around, and return to the playlist within hours.
“And obviously, like I match so many cheaters in my career that I don’t even care that much anymore,” he continued. “I’m just numb to it. But when they can actually prevent me from playing games or controlling what I do now is starting to become a problem for sure. And I know there are bigger problems in the game.
“And I know the game needs to be better in other departments, but I just want to rant today and just talk about my feelings towards this situation. And all I’m saying is that cheaters are still going to be there and they’re always going to be there, but Bungie needs to find a way to make the cheats less evolve.
“It needs to be just aimbots or wall hack. Like something not too crazy, because the fact that they can fly around, they can increase the size of their character, they can have new Supers, they can change their name, they can crash your game.”
This is not the first high-profile Trials streamer to step back. Earlier this year, GrenaderJake, arguably the biggest Trials of Osiris streamer, announced he was taking a long break from the mode, saying it had “lost its identity”, that loot and Lighthouse rewards no longer feel special, and even calling on Bungie to scrap Trials and rebuild it from the ground up.
All of this lands on top of a long-running complaint from the community that Bungie has left Destiny 2 PvP on the back burner. To Bungie’s credit, the company has issued bans and won several lawsuits against major cheat sellers, including millions in damages.
Speaking of PvP, Bungie’s first new non-Destiny project in more than a decade, the extraction shooter Marathon, is expected to get a new ViDoc soon, as revealed in The Game Post’s recent exclusive.
What do you think about the current state of Trials of Osiris and Destiny 2 PvP, and have you run into similar cheaters in your own games? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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