Two days ago, Bungie turned disconnected the Destiny 2 servers portion the workplace looked into a occupation that had players seemingly losing advancement connected in-game challenges. This outage lasted a spot longer than everyone expected, with the free-to-play loot shooter remaining offline for astir 20 hours. So what happened? Today Bungie pulled backmost the curtain and explained precisely what went incorrect and wherefore it had to rotation backmost the game, erasing a fewer hours of folks’ quest advancement successful the process.

On January 24 astatine astir 2:00 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it was taking Destiny 2 offline portion it investigated an “ongoing contented causing definite Triumphs, Seals, and Catalysts to suffer advancement for players.” A fewer hours later, astatine 5:51 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it had perchance recovered a hole for the contented and was investigating it, but was incapable to specify erstwhile oregon if Destiny 2’s servers would travel backmost online. Nearly 4 hours later, Bungie tweeted for the past clip that night, announcing that Destiny 2 would not beryllium playable that evening. Nearly 12 hours later, astatine astir 9:55 a.m, Bungie announced it had yet solved the problem and servers would beryllium coming backmost online pursuing a hotfix. The astir 20 hours of downtime had immoderate players disquieted astir the game’s health, and its future. After years of bugs and breached updates, it was truly starting to consciousness similar the seven-year-old shooter was being held unneurotic with duct tape.

So what happened during those 20 hours and wherefore was the crippled down for truthful long, seemingly with small warning? Bungie has explained what broke, why, and however it was fixed successful its latest blog post. And surprisingly, the developer is much transparent than you mightiness think, going into method details of the issue.

According to Bungie, soon aft releasing a erstwhile update for the crippled (Hotfix 6.3.0.5) players began reporting that galore Triumphs, Seals, and catalysts had vanished. Bungie realized that this was being caused aft it moved immoderate “currently incompletable” challenges into a antithetic country of the game’s data. To bash this, Bungie utilized a “very powerful” instrumentality that lets the workplace tinker with a player’s crippled authorities and account. Apparently, owed to a configuration error, Bungie accidentally “re-ran an older authorities migration process” utilized successful a past update. Because of this error, the instrumentality copied aged information from this past update into the existent mentation of the game, which fundamentally undid immoderate players’ caller in-game accomplishments

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“Once we identified that the contented resulted successful a nonaccomplishment of subordinate state,” wrote Bungie, “we took the crippled down and rolled backmost the subordinate database portion we investigated however to region the unsafe alteration from the build.”

After creating a caller spot that removed the mistaken alteration the contented was fixed, and pursuing immoderate testing, Bugnie deployed the update. However, arsenic a effect of this patch, each subordinate accounts had to beryllium rolled backmost a fewer hours earlier the troublesome update went live. This means immoderate subordinate advancement made betwixt 8:20 and 11 a.m. connected January 24 was lost. Any purchases made during this clip got refunded, too.

While it sucks that the crippled was down for truthful agelong and that the squad was forced to walk what sounds similar galore precocious hours trying to hole their mistake, it’s refreshing to spot a developer beryllium truthful unfastened and honorable astir what happened and however it was fixed. In a clip erstwhile games consciousness buggier than ever and players are fed up with delays, outages, and breached updates, it’s astute to propulsion backmost the curtain and amusement everyone conscionable however hard it is to make, maintain, and prolong video games arsenic analyzable arsenic Destiny 2.

Hopefully, next month’s caller Destiny 2 expansion, Lightfall, and the upcoming Season 20 rollout volition spell a small smoother than this caller 20-hour hiccup.