Bungie has a dire warning about the Destiny 2 Spicy Ramen Coupon Emblem

Destiny 2 players love the Cayde-6, and while Nathan Fillion’s wise-cracking character has been absent from the game’s lore for quite some time, the memory of the robotic Exo lives on through his appreciation for Spicy Ramen. That adoration for Cayde got a little out of hand Sunday afternoon, as players began paying real-life money to unlock an unreleased emblem.

In response, developer Bungie has issued a pretty dire warning for anyone who is considering purchasing it.

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What is the Destiny 2 Spicy Ramen Coupon Emblem?

The Spicy Ramen Emblem is an upcoming cosmetic that will be offered in Destiny 2 as a free reward on Bungie Day, which is set to occur on July 7, 2021. The Emblem is a nod to Cayde’s Spicy Ramen quest that yields a Spicy Ramen Coupon lore item for visiting the ramen shop in the Tower.

In Destiny, Emblems are essentially backgrounds for your character’s name across various menus. Some are rewarded for accomplishing great feats within the game, and others are used to track progress with all sorts of things like the number of enemies killed as a specific subclass, for instance.

What happened? Controversy erupted this weekend when an unknown Twitter user reported that they had received a Spicy Ramen Coupon Emblem code from a “source” and that they would be selling it for real-world cash. The leak appears to have been fairly niche, as footage of the Emblem has not yet surfaced.

When employees at Bungie caught wind of the breach, a few studio figures blamed the incident on data-mining, further suggesting fans ignore these alleged leaks in the future. “Don't buy the Spicy Ramen Coupon emblem. It's meant to be a free gift on Bungie Day, from us to you,” wrote Bungie Community Manager dmg04 on Twitter Sunday evening. “Dataminers — please stop spoiling content, whether it be story or emblem codes. I know it can be exciting to be the first person with cool info, but please respect the fun.”

From Bungie player support, Drewardo added, “I can’t begin to describe how bad it makes us feel at Bungie when things are leaked and spoiled. We want to excite and delight everyone with our stories and content, and to see them datamined, leaked, or just spoiled really puts a damper on things for us.”

Why it matters — While most gamers may understand or even agree with the sentiment expressed in these tweets, there’s an ongoing discussion in the Destiny 2 community about the broader ethics of data-mining and whether or not Bungie has a right to overtly suggest that the practice is the root cause of this particular leak.

After all, if the leaker did simply receive it from a “source” as said leaker describes, is it possible the code for the Spicy Ramen Coupon Emblem made its way into the wrong hands directly from developers? From the limited view fans have, that seems like a strong possibility.

And, on the subject of data-mining in general, arguments can be made about shared responsibility between game creators and game fans.

What’s next — If Bungie truly cares about data-mining, is it the studio’s duty to do a better job of locking down its code so leaks such as these don’t happen? Should players be more cognizant that, while unfinished content exists in almost all the games we play, should more respect be paid to devs by keeping those secrets under wraps? What about Bungie’s own API that gives players open access to questlines and the like in advance?

While the Spicy Ramen Coupon Emblem itself has remained mostly concealed from the public for now, the fact that it exists and is allegedly being sold has sparked a controversy around those questions. For everyone not knee-deep in the weeds of community squabbles, however, just know that the Spicy Ramen Coupon Emblem exists and that it will soon be a part of your inventory as long as you log in on or around July 7, 2021.