The Destiny 2 concurrent player record on Steam was in sight following the hotly-anticipated launch of The Final Shape today, but it’s fallen just short of the mark due to massive server outages and issues, with players disrupted as they begin their campaign through the Pale Heart of the Traveler.
As guardians flooded Destiny 2 and took on The Witness’ forces for the first time, it certainly looked like the all-time concurrent player record would be shattered just hours after servers were switched on after a 25-hour downtime. According to stats site SteamDB, the 316,750 record set by Lightfall was going to be hit with ease; however, players were then bombarded with mass CURRANT, PLUM, and CACAO error codes, kicking them out of their campaign missions and back to orbit.
For some unlucky few, their campaign progression was reset for that mission, meaning they’d have to repeat the mission in its entirety—assuming they could even get back in. More error codes have prevented guardians from even landing in the Tower and other key locations. Most annoying of all, if the error codes kicked in after a mission was finished, the game would skip cutscenes vital to the narrative of The Final Shape.
“I was wondering why the pacing felt so weird until I realized I had missed two entire cutscenes and had to look them up,” one player said in a June 4 Reddit thread, with many more affected. Not even I could avoid the cutscene skip, with two of the opening cutscenes (one including a pretty important character) gone thanks to a CURRANT error.
“I understand and sympathize with server instability, but it feels so bad for the story experience to be harmed this much,” another Destiny fan said, with many already resorting to calling the expansion’s launch a “disaster.” Players in droves are now opting to sit out the day’s play in the hopes servers will be more stable tomorrow.
This means less time for players to prepare for the second part of the game’s launch—the Salvation’s Edge Raid release—on June 7. Bungie has been working through the night in an attempt to rectify the server issues.
Here’s hoping the Destiny 2 devs get things right before the weekend.
