The Share Play feature of the Sony PlayStation 4 allows gamers to play with their friend's copy of a video game remotely, virtually letting gamers pass on their controller to another gamer over the Internet. While Share Play is a welcome feature to most gamers, it can also have a dark side attached to it.
The dark side of game sharing certainly showed itself to Henry Kramer, a 5th grader whose pair of high-level Destiny characters were deleted after using the feature.
According to a report by Eurogamer, Kramer passed control of his game to a friend with the PSN username KirmitTHEfrog to try out a glitch that can quickly level his characters in the online space shooter.
The user was an online friend of Kramer's real-life friend, someone that the 5th grader had previously played with and had earned his trust. After passing controls to KirmitTHEfrog, Kramer was told to get something.
Once Kramer left, the user logged out to the main menu of Destiny and viewed Kramer's characters for the game: a level 31 Warlock, a level 26 Titan and a level 23 Hunter. The user then deleted the Warlock and the Titan before Kramer returned and figured out what was happening.
Because Kramer was streaming the game through Twitch to try the level-up glitch, the entire incident was recorded. Viewers of the video can hear the 5th grader crying after what happened, which is understandable considering the amount of work and time that he put in to get the characters to where they were.
Bungie, the developer of Destiny, has so far refused to provide Kramer with high-level gear to speed up his recovery from the incident despite overwhelming petitions from the Destiny community. Kramer's mother, however, said that the development team of the game have offered to play with the 5th grader to speed up his leveling process.
The Destiny team has also revealed plans to make such deletions, like what happened to Kramer, less permanent primarily for situations such as this.
Video game website Game Informer was successful in contacting the user that deleted Kramer's characters, and was told that it was a visitor who used the account for the incident. The account owner who goes by the name of Adam said that he was in an accident, and so many friends have been visiting him at home. It was one of his friends that supposedly deleted Kramer's characters, but he does not know who exactly did it.
