Proxies for Destiny 2: Peer-to-Peer Exposure, the Bungie API, and What a Proxy Can Do

Proxies for Destiny 2 are three unrelated questions wearing one search term. The first is about the game's netcode, which is partly peer-to-peer and once exposed every player's IP address to every other player in the activity, a design that turned denial-of-service attacks into a Trials of Osiris weekend ritual. The second is about the Bungie API, which throttles requests per IP address, a detail that decides how tools built on it scale. The third is the ordinary account and store side, where a proxy does what it does everywhere. Only the second and third are proxy problems, and the first is the one most people arrive with.

We operate the network a share of this runs on, and the Destiny 2 tickets split the same three ways the topic does. Players who bought a proxy to hide from a Trials opponent, when the game's traffic never touched it. Developers whose clan tool went dark on a launch weekend because one server address hit Bungie's emergency throttle for all their users at once. This page covers what the netcode does and what Bungie changed, why the API throttle is per address and what that means for tooling, what BattlEye and Bungie's ban policy cover, which proxy type fits which job, and where a proxy stops.

What proxies are best for Destiny 2?

For tooling against the Bungie API, ISP proxies (static residential), one fixed address per worker, so each worker stays inside Bungie's per-address throttle and a launch-weekend surge on one address does not take every user down with it. For Bungie.net and Steam accounts, the same static addresses held sticky, or residential pinned to the account's region for store and expansion price research. Datacenter only for reaching Bungie or Steam on a blocked network. For the match itself, nothing, because it runs over UDP and a proxy adds a hop it cannot carry.

Destiny's netcode exposes players to each other, and what Bungie changed

Destiny 2 does not run on a simple client-server model. Its activities mix dedicated servers for the parts Bungie has to control with peer-to-peer connections between players for movement and combat, an arrangement PC Gamer once described as uniquely complicated. In a pure peer-to-peer setup, every player's IP address is visible to every other player in the session, and that is the ingredient a denial-of-service attack needs: flood the address, and the target disconnects. Trials of Osiris, where a single loss ends a run, made that attack worth someone's effort, and Bungie's forums carry years of reports of it.

On PC, Bungie changed the foundation in March 2020. The game moved from raw Windows sockets, where peers are addressed by IP, to Steam's networking sockets, where peers are addressed by Steam ID and the traffic is relayed through Valve's network. A player on Steam no longer hands their address to the lobby. That change was specific to the Steam version, and consoles rely on their platform networks.

None of this is a job for a proxy, and it is worth being exact about why. The peer-to-peer and server traffic is UDP. HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS4 proxies carry TCP only, and SOCKS5's UDP relaying is something almost no proxy from a list implements. A proxy set on the system routes the Steam client's web traffic and leaves the match connecting direct from your real address. Where exposure still matters, the tool is a VPN, which carries UDP at the cost of ping, and even that is less necessary on PC than it was before 2020.

The Bungie API throttles per IP address

This is the Destiny 2 job where proxies do real work, and it is a developer's job. Destiny Item Manager, clan managers, stat trackers, raid report sites, and thousands of smaller tools run on the Bungie.net API, which requires an API key and applies a throttle. Bungie staff have described the normal limit as about 25 requests per second, applied per IP address and shared by every application behind that address, and an emergency throttle used during launch surges of 10 requests per second averaged over 10 seconds, again per IP. A throttled response carries a ThrottleSeconds value that tells your client how long to back off before trying again, and Bungie's terms require request volumes to stay reasonable.

The per-address part is what decides architecture. A tool that serves ten thousand users from one server address spends the whole per-address budget on their behalf, and on a launch weekend the emergency throttle lands on all of them at once. Splitting workers across separate static addresses gives each worker its own budget under Bungie's stated rate, which is a legitimate way to keep a service responsive, and a different thing from using addresses to push past what Bungie allows. Read the ThrottleSeconds value and honor it on every worker, keep each address under the stated rate, and treat a sustained need for more as a conversation with Bungie rather than a reason to buy more IPs.

The addresses for this job are static, not rotating. Bungie ties nothing to the address except the throttle, and a worker that hops exits makes its own back-off bookkeeping meaningless. One ISP address per worker, held indefinitely, is the shape.

What Bungie bans, and what a proxy touches

BattlEye reads the machine. Bungie added BattlEye to Destiny 2 with update 3.3.0 on 24 August 2021, at the start of Season of the Lost. It runs on the PC and reports what it finds there. It does not read your connection, so a proxy is irrelevant to it.

Bans and restrictions follow the account and the hardware. Bungie's policy reserves the right to ban accounts and player hardware, escalates activity restrictions to device bans after repeated offenses, applies permanent bans for first-time egregious violations, and reviews every case before acting. A ban or restriction for cheating can be applied to the whole fireteam. A player can lose access to gear tied to a restricted activity. None of this reads an IP address, and a different address changes none of it.

Sign-in location is a consistency signal. Bungie.net sign-ins run through platform accounts (Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Epic), and those platforms check for logins from new countries and from hosting ranges. This is the dimension a proxy governs on the account side, and the reason it should be a static residential address in the account's own region.

Expansion pricing follows the platform. On PC, Destiny 2's expansions are priced by Steam region, and Steam ties the wallet region to a local payment method with a cooldown between changes. A proxy shows you another region's price; it does not let you pay it. The details are in proxies for Steam.

So a proxy solves the address layer on the account and API side and nothing else. It does not carry the match, hide you from peers, matter to BattlEye, lift a ban, or change what Steam lets you pay.

Why people use proxies for Destiny 2

• API tooling that has to stay up on launch weekends. The per-address throttle is the reason, and static addresses per worker are the answer.
• Keeping accounts separate. A player with a main and an alt, a content creator with test accounts, a clan with shared administrative accounts: platforms group accounts that share an address, and one clean IP per account keeps a flag on one from reaching the rest.
• Store and expansion research. Seeing how an expansion or Silver is priced in another Steam region is a browser behind a proxy in that region, with the wallet rule above still in force.
• Reaching Bungie or Steam on a blocked network. Dorms and offices block Steam or Bungie's domains, and a proxy tunnels the web side around it. This is the one case where a free proxy is a fair first try.
• Hiding from peers, which a proxy cannot do. The UDP section above is the whole answer, and on PC the Steam relay already does most of the job.

Which proxy type fits Destiny 2

ISP proxies are static residential: one address, yours for as long as you keep it, on always-on hardware. This is the tool for API workers, each on its own fixed address inside the throttle, and for a platform account that should sign in from the same place every day.

Residential proxies are real home connections, pinned to a country and held sticky for a session, so a store check reads as a local and a second account signs in from where it lives. Rotating residential has a narrow role here, reading public Bungie.net pages at volume, and no role on the API, where a rotating exit breaks your own throttle bookkeeping. New to the category? What is a residential proxy explains the sourcing.

Datacenter proxies draw platform sign-in checks and fit only the blocked-network case. For API workers they are tempting because they are cheap and static, and the throttle does not care about reputation, so they are a defensible choice there and nowhere else on this page.

Mobile proxies are carrier addresses shared by many phones, the hardest to flag and the wrong shape for anything Destiny 2 needs.

How to set it up

API workers. Give each worker process its own ISP address, configured in the HTTP client the worker uses, and keep a per-worker rate limiter under Bungie's stated rate. Parse ThrottleSeconds on every throttled response and sleep that long before retrying on that worker; do not fail over to another address, because the throttle is a signal about your rate, not about the exit. Our guides for Python requests and Node.js cover the client side, and how to fix 429 too many requests covers back-off patterns that translate directly.

Accounts and store research. Set a sticky residential or ISP proxy in a browser, one profile per account, matched to the account's region. An extension like FoxyProxy is the quick route for one account (our FoxyProxy guide covers it), and an anti-detect browser keeps several apart; see antidetect browser proxy setup.

The game. Leave it alone. The Steam client's web traffic will follow a system proxy if you set one, and the match will not, so a proxy on the system only adds latency to the parts that do not matter.

Verify every exit in our proxy checker first: country, latency, and whether your real address leaks in the headers.

API workers (one static IP each, rate-limited under Bungie's throttle):
  worker 1  ->  198.51.100.80   ISP, held, honors ThrottleSeconds
  worker 2  ->  198.51.100.81   ISP, held, honors ThrottleSeconds
  worker 3  ->  198.51.100.82   ISP, held, honors ThrottleSeconds

Accounts (one sticky IP each, in the account's region):
  main (Steam, EU)   ->  residential sticky, Germany, held
  alt (Steam, EU)    ->  residential sticky, Germany, held

How many IPs, sticky versus rotating

For API tooling, count workers: one static address per worker, each rate-limited under Bungie's per-address throttle, and add workers rather than pushing one address harder. For accounts, count accounts: one sticky address each, in the account's region, held indefinitely. Rotating residential has one narrow place, reading public web pages at volume, and no place on the API or under an account. API traffic is small per request but constant, and account traffic is tiny, so the cost is in addresses rather than data. Our pricing is pay-as-you-go with a balance that does not expire, and ISP addresses are billed per IP per month, which makes a worker pool a predictable line item.

Free versus paid for Destiny 2

A free proxy can get a browser onto Bungie.net or Steam from a blocked network, and a dead one costs a swap. Our free proxy list re-checks itself every few minutes across 100+ countries, and the proxy checker confirms an entry first. For the API, free is the wrong tool for a reason specific to Bungie: the throttle is per address and shared by everyone behind it, so a public proxy arrives with its budget already spent by strangers, and it dies within minutes on top. For accounts, never sign in through one; the mechanism is in are free proxies safe. Paid ISP addresses at $2.70/IP are the answer for workers and daily sign-ins, and residential at $0.44/GB pay-as-you-go with no KYC covers store research and second accounts for very little.

Where a proxy stops and Bungie starts

On Destiny 2 a proxy acts on the TCP half: Bungie.net, the Steam client's web side, the store, and the API, where the per-address throttle makes a static address per worker a real engineering decision. It does not act on the match, which is UDP and, on PC, already relayed through Steam's network so peers never see your address. It does not matter to BattlEye, does not lift an account, device, or fireteam ban, and does not change what Steam lets you pay in your region. Cheating, ban evasion, and API abuse break Bungie's terms on any address, and that risk stays with you.

For reaching Bungie or Steam on a blocked network, start free with the free proxy list and the proxy checker. For API workers and the accounts you keep, one ISP address each, and for store research and second accounts, clean residential at $0.44/GB pay-as-you-go held sticky per account, is what holds. Honor ThrottleSeconds, keep each address under Bungie's rate, and let the match play direct.

Sources

• PC Gamer, The strange science of Destiny 2's uniquely complicated netcode (hybrid peer-to-peer and server model): pcgamer.com
• Game Rant, Destiny 2 made a huge change that will help with Trials and PvP (Steam networking sockets replace IP-addressed Windows sockets on PC, March 2020): gamerant.com
• Bungie.net forums, API Throttle (Bungie staff on the 25 requests per second throttle and the per-IP emergency throttle): bungie.net
• Bungie Help, Destiny Account Restrictions and Banning Policies (account and hardware bans, review before action, fireteam consequences): help.bungie.net
• TheSixthAxis, Destiny 2 anti-cheat measures (BattlEye arrives with update 3.3.0, 24 August 2021): thesixthaxis.com