Updated: After 20 hours of downtime, Destiny 2 is back online with a hotfix and a rollback

The Traveller from Destiny 2 viewed from orbit over Earth.

(Image credit: Bungie)

Update #3: As of 7 am PT—slightly later than predicted—a hotfix has been released to fix the issues that caused players to lose Seals, Triumphs, Medals and other achievements. Hotfix 6.3.0.6 is available now.

In addition to the deployment, Bungie has rolled back player accounts to their state as of yesterday, January 24, at 8:20 am PT—just after the weekly reset. Likely this was necessary to actually restore the missing Triumphs. Bungie notes that any progress made between that time and the game being taken offline will now be lost.

It's a small price to pay to restore the collective weight of player achievements over the years. Nevertheless, let us pour one out to this one player who earned Hierarchy of Needs in that timeframe—a rare Exotic drop from the new Spire of the Watcher dungeon that you only get up to three chances to earn per week. May your future clears be blessed.

so_what_are_you_losing_in_the_rollback from r/DestinyTheGame

This was a particularly long outage by Destiny 2 standards, but is also the latest in a series of incidents regarding the game's infrastructure. In previous months, we've seen multiple, lengthy outages to the API—a problem that makes the game much harder to play. Hopefully these are just isolated issues as we prepare for the launch of Lightfall next month, and the introduction of in-game loadouts.


Update #2: Welp. As became increasingly clear as the evening wore on, this one isn't going to be fixed tonight. Per the Bungie Help Twitter account, the studio is aiming to resolve the issue in the early hours of Thursday (Pacific time), but right now I wouldn't set your watch by that. As things stand, this is not the first rollback in the game's history, but it feels like a major one. 

Still, I guess a break from Destiny 2 won't do anyone any harm. I finished Cult of the Lamb tonight, so that's something.


Update #1: As of 7 pm PT the game is still offline, and Bungie says it'll remain that way "into the evening." I called correctly that a full roll back of player accounts would be required, so bad news if you managed to get Hierarchy of Needs to drop in the limited time the game was live before the problem was identified. I'll update again once Destiny 2 is live.


Original story: 'Shadow'. 'Conqueror'. 'King-Slayer'. These are things absolutely nobody will ever actually call me, but I proudly display all three on my guardians when playing Destiny 2. Each is a cosmetic title which has to be earned by completing a checklist of triumphs required for a particular "seal." Once the seal is finished you can then wear the associated "title." Some triumphs are simple, like racking up enough of a particular kind of kill, while others are pretty tricky, like requiring whole raids to be done without anyone on the team dying.

As you can imagine, there's a moderate amount of prestige attached to the more rare ones, or at least grudging respect in the case of the lunatics who actually grinded out the 'Reckoner' title from the Gambit mode. Thus there was no small amount of consternation today as players logged after hotfix 6.3.0.5 to find that some of their titles were missing.

It seems that some triumphs previously marked as complete are no longer ticked, or showing missing progress, meaning that the corresponding title could no longer be applied to their toons. Bungie has acknowledged the issue, also noting that progress on exotic catalysts was missing, and the game has now been taken offline while the studio investigates.

Honestly, I don't think it's time to panic (and not just because as far as I could tell my titles were all still in place). The reason the game is offline is likely because a rollback is required to restore the correct data, and therefore Bungie won't want players out in the wild earning gear and triumphs they subsequently end up losing. I'll update this story as and when the fix is applied. 

Titles are familiar badges of honor in MMOs. Did you know that Luke Smith, executive creative director of the Destiny universe at Bungie (now there's a title), counts becoming a Scarab Lord in World of Warcraft among his most formative gaming experiences? You do now.

Oh, and in case you're curious, here's a list of all 28 titles currently obtainable in Destiny 2, ordered by reverse chronology of release: MMXXII, Star Baker, WANTED, Seraph, Ghost Writer, Kingslayer, Scallywag, Flamekeeper, Reveler, Discerptor, Iron Lord, Reaper, Risen, Gumshoe, Disciple-Slayer, Vidmaster, Deadeye, Flawless, Conqueror, Unbroken, Dredgen, Splintered, Fatebreaker, Descendant, Harbinger, Enlightened, Cursebreaker, Rivensbane.

In case you missed it we also ran an exclusive Q&A with the Bungie devs yesterday that dug into some of the nitty-gritty changes coming to build crafting when the Lightfall expansion launches on February 28. Well worth a read. 

Tim Clark

With over two decades covering videogames, Tim has been there from the beginning. In his case, that meant playing Elite in 'co-op' on a BBC Micro (one player uses the movement keys, the other shoots) until his parents finally caved and bought an Amstrad CPC 6128. These days, when not steering the good ship PC Gamer, Tim spends his time complaining that all Priest mains in Hearthstone are degenerates and raiding in Destiny 2. He's almost certainly doing one of these right now. 

With contributions from