PS4's game-sharing feature used to delete a kid's 'Destiny' characters
The very conceit of PlayStation 4's Share Play feature is futuristic as all get-out, but it has a dark side too. Take 5th grader Henry Kramer's recent Destiny woes for example. After virtually passing his DualShock 4 to another player to access a glitch that Kramer hoped would quickly boost his characters, the other party urged him to go grab something from another room as a distraction, according to Eurogamer. Twitch viewers (Kramer was streaming at the time) watched as the nefarious user proceeded to delete two of his three characters: a nearly maxed out level 31 Warlock and a level 26 Titan, but it wasn't until Kramer came back that he saw the damage done. You can hear him crying upon his realization in the video linked here, and, well, it's hard to not be affected by it at least a little bit.
Developer Bungie won't transfer any high-level gear to Kramer's account, despite petitions from the game's community, but in an effort to spread the word, made the video that Kramer's mom sent in part of last Friday's weekly update. Sadly, because Kramer knowingly gave control of his account to the troll, no wrongdoing had occurred. To Bungie's credit, Kramer's mom says that members of the Destiny development team have offered to play with him to make the leveling process a bit faster. What's more, the team says it "has plans to make regrettable deletions less permanent," as it works on new features for the game.
And the person that did the deleting? Game Informer contacted the account owner and the story isn't as cut and dried as you might think. Turns out that the troll wasn't the account owner himself, but a visitor. Twenty-three year-old "Adam" was in a pretty serious car accident not that long ago and as such, he's been at home recovering and has a lot of friends passing through to spend time with him. The jerk that deleted Kramer's save files was one such pal, but Adam says because of the amount of painkillers he's on, he sleeps a lot while people are over and he can't pinpoint exactly who did it.
The team says it "has plans to make regrettable deletions less permanent," as it works on new features for the game.
So, there are a few takeaways from this. One, this could've been prevented with the safety measures available for kids' PlayStation Network accounts (those that prevent Twitch streaming and limit messaging, for instance). Secondly, don't let strangers jump into your game sessions with Share Play. Perhaps most importantly though, follow Wheaton's Law to the letter: Don't be a dick.
