Destiny 2 devs reveal why they were forced to revert player accounts

For the second time in two weeks, Destiny 2 players have had their currency wiped after a bug with the title’s weekly reset. Now, Bungie has revealed exactly why they were forced to pull the server plug, and revert player accounts.

In the early hours of Tuesday, February 11, Bungie developers pushed Hotfix 2.7.1.1, and with it, the release of Valentine’s Day event Crimson Days. Within the hour, players were reporting glitched currencies, loot pools, and more.

The reports were the same as two weeks ago, when Bungie was forced to eventually trip the server switch and pull the looter shooter down momentarily. This time around, they didn’t wait. Destiny disappeared for nearly six hours.

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Now, Destiny is back online, and it appears as if currency for all players who were affected during the 90 minute period have had their accounts restored, but considering this is the second time it has happened in two weeks, players wanted answers. Was their gear safe, or would every reset potentially spell doom?

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According to Bungie, who addressed the downtime and a potential third glitch event in a developer blog post soon after bringing the servers back online, they appear to have nipped the “rogue” problem in the bud, permanently this time.

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Apparently, the issue stemmed from repetitive server stress, and the high amount of players that would pour back into the MMORPG every reset. The surge would often overload servers, but Bungie would just re-load them without problem.

This time, however, the devs accidentally loaded the database, known as the WorldServers, without the fix they had loaded to fight the currency corruption two weeks ago. When they revived the downed servers, they brought back the bug.

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“Our investigation uncovered what we thought was an impossible situation: a small number of our WorldServers had loaded without the correct configuration which fixed the issues from 2.7.1 [two weeks ago],” the devs explained.

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“Unfortunately, anyone whose characters had been accessed using one of these out-of-date servers encountered the character-corrupting problem.”

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Basically, Bungie had accidentally re-fired the currency-destroying bug back into their game’s code ecosystem. Luckily, the devs knew how to combat, and have learned their lesson. This time, they promised, it was gone for good.

“We have identified a number of safeguards that should prevent this particular issue from happening again in the future,” they said. “We are investigating ways to speed up rollback, and add more protection around account clean-up code.”

Bungie also added that it had added protocols that meant the game couldn’t load without “unexpected” versions, and solved the WorldServers start-up crashes. They also added a “permanent fix” for character corruption, to launch next patch.

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Finally, the devs apologized for the “frustrating” rollbacks, and conceded it was an issue they “should have been able to avoid.” “We’re sorry for the frustration this caused and will work to prevent these kinds of things from happening again.”

For now, it looks like the issues may have been solved, but keep your eyes peeled for any other currency-munching bugs that may raise their ugly heads over the next little while—the loot-draining glitch has returned once, it could again.

With everyone’s currency back where it rightfully belongs too, Destiny players are now turning their attention back to the annual Valentine’s Day celebrations, Crimson Days. The event is expected to run until February 18.