How to validate your Destiny 2 account

Over the past few years, Bungie has been working hard to deal with a large number of cheaters in Destiny 2. Despite having a solid anti-cheat program, players can still come across cheaters every now and then, mostly in the game's PvP modes.

According to the Bungie Help page, a feature already exists to help with this problem, requiring players to validate their identity using the SMS service on their phones. This feature was introduced back in Beyond Light and still exists today. That said, here's what players need to do if they ever come across such a validation prompt.

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How to validate Destiny 2 account using SMS verification

Players will be asked to validate their account when they log into Destiny 2 or when they're about to enter a restricted activity. As of now, these activities only include the Competitive Crucible mode and the Iron Banner mode. More activities are likely to enter this list sometime in the future.

Whenever players come across a validation prompt, they'll have to:

• Click on the Verify Now button on the SMS verification pop-up.
• This should take you to the Bungie website.
• Once you're on the website, you'll need to sign into your account and then enter your phone number in the given space.
• After your number is entered, you'll have to request for a verification code. Once you receive this code on your phone and enter it correctly, you'll be able to access the restricted content.

Interestingly, only a certain number of players will be affected by this verification process. Free-to-play players will have to complete this verification process for the first time before they queue up for Competitive Crucible or Iron Banner matches.

The help page further goes on to mention that players will have to sign into Destiny 2 after the verification process is complete in order to gain access to any restricted activities. A single phone number can be used to verify up to five accounts. Cheating has been a fairly common issue for a while now, and it's played a major role in ruining the overall PvP experience.

Now that Bungie is actively working to make the PvP mode better, players might encounter such validation messages more frequently in the upcoming days. Not only that, Bungie could also implement some more features like this to further strengthen their anti-cheat mechanisms.

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Upcoming changes to Iron Banner in Destiny 2

Keeping in line with the changes to the PvP mode, Bungie is currently working on some much-needed changes to Iron Banner. At one point in time, this particular mode was extremely popular, but that popularity has dwindled over the past few seasons with the mode's frequency being severely reduced.

At the time of writing this article, Iron Banner went live twice over the course of a season, with each run lasting for a week. However, come Destiny 2 Lightfall, the Iron Banner mode will appear thrice per season, with the grind to earn those elusive rewards being eased up by a small margin as well.

Interestingly, these changes were announced after players began deliberately throwing matches to quickly reach a shader that was locked in the reward track after the first reset with Lord Saladin Forge. Although Fortress is the newest mode in the Iron Banner this season, it's presently unclear if the developers will introduce a new mode once Lightfall goes live.