Destiny is full of glitches. Gaming the game - "cheesing" -
has become part of the Destiny experience, a way of gaining an edge against its randomly-awarded loot system. New strategies spread virally - often vocally, from one randomly-matched player to another - or via discussion boards such as r/Destiny. Keeping up with the latest techniques has become a game in itself, with the community sharing tips and trying to keep one step ahead of developer Bungie.
So when Henry heard about a new glitch, he was eager to see it in action. He told his Twitch viewers that he was giving control of his game to a friend - PSN user KirmitTHEfrog. This was someone that had contacted Henry in the past, an online friend of a real-life friend that Henry had played with and who had earned his trust. Such is the way Destiny friends are added.
The fifth grader, from California, was unsure of how to use SharePlay - the PlayStation 4's method of letting someone play your console over the internet as if you had passed your controller to them. But his new friend talked him through the process, gaining access to Henry's game, then telling Henry to go grab something - to get up and take his attention away from what was about to happen.
The user quickly logged out to the game's main menu and moved the game's cursor to hover over Henry's collection of characters. Level 31 Warlock - deleted. Level 26 Titan - deleted. Accessing Henry's final character, the level 23 Hunter, the user logged back in and set to work on the character's top-level exotic weaponry.
It was at this point that Henry saw what was happening and, aghast, realised too late that he had been trolled. Still streaming via Twitch, Henry hit the power button on his console, turning it off and cutting the user's connection.
"They [had] played together for a while and the troll earned Henry's trust," Henry's mum Courtney told Eurogamer. "Enough to promise Henry that he could help him if Henry gave him control of his player."
The Twitch stream continued, as Henry powered his console back on to discover the full extent of the damage.
"I didn't want that gun anyway," he is heard telling the troll, before Destiny's main menu loads and he realises he has lost his two high-level characters as well.
"As you can see in the video, he was devastated," Courtney continues. The footage ends with the 11-year-old audibly sobbing - it's not easy to listen to.
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