Judge orders privacy app to release names of racist Destiny 2 players

A judge mandated that TextNow, a private phone and chat app, must release the names of users who used the app to harass Bungie developers with racist messages.

Superior Court Justice Fred Myers ruled that TextNow, a privacy-based phone and chat app, must release the names of its customers who participated in a targeted harassment campaign against Destiny 2 developers Bungie Inc.

Bungie is a game developer well known for their popular space shooter Destiny 2, and recently promoted some members of its Destiny 2 community on their official Twitter. One of these members is Uhmaayyze, a Destiny 2 content creator, and he is African-American. Uhmaayyze is well known for playing and freestyle rapping at the same time.

The day the promotional tweet went live, several anonymous users began ‘doxxing’ Bungie employees. Doxxing is a modern term for revealing personal information publicly on the internet for random people to abuse. Shortly after the tweet, Bungie employees began receiving anonymous messages on Twitter threatening to kill them.

Destiny 2 features space monstrosities for players to overcome. Picture: Bungie

After that, the floodgates opened. Several employees at Bungie received voicemails and text messages on private phones, all of which had variations of the N-word, a racial slur. “That night a person who called himself ‘Brian’ left a voicemail on the personal telephone line of the employee who posted the ads. Brian referred to the employee by name and requested that Destiny 2 provide a scene or a downloadable piece of the game (DLC) for ‘N-word killing,’ ” Judge Myers said.

“A few minutes later he called back and identified himself as a member of a far-right-wing social network known to publish material that is censored from mainstream social media. He repeated the request for an ‘N-word killing’ DLC to be added to Destiny 2.”

Later, another employee received a voicemail that simply said “Enjoy your pizza.” Around that time, a pizza delivery driver arrived at their home. The use of private home addresses that have never been publicly posted anywhere scared the employee, leading them to file a report with the local police.

TextNow, the company that provides anonymous chat features, still does collect information about each user, including email, phone number, IP address, credit card info and text logs for each user. “Our mission is to provide everyone with an affordable way to communicate, and we place a high value on the safety and privacy of our users,” a TextNow spokesman stated in an email to the Record. “From time to time, we receive lawful requests for information. We comply with all valid requests as required by law.”

This is yet another example of anonymous harassers believing they can get away with this sort of behaviour. Bungie recently took another previously anonymous user to court over threats of violence and cheating. The behaviour of some bad apples in the Destiny 2 community has caused a rift between the developers and the players — they opened up about the harassment causing them to disengage with their fans.

Original reporting by The Record.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.