Why Destiny 2 Servers Went Down When Shadowkeep Launched [Update]

Bungie's server maintenance has begun. If you try to log in right now, you'll be met with a "Destiny 2 is temporarily at capacity" error that suggests you've entered a queue. Servers should be back online soon if all goes as scheduled, though as noted below, you can expect to potentially enter a queue once maintenance is over. [Update: Maintenance is over, and indeed, you may hit a queue if you try to log in right away.]

Destiny 2 will be offline on October 3 as developer Bungie performs maintenance on the multiplayer game's servers. The downtime will commence today in less than half an hour--servers go down at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET / 3 PM GMT (12 AM AET on Friday), and during this time the game will be unplayable, while some functionality on Destiny's connected experiences across web, mobile, and third-party apps may be interrupted.

The downtime is expected to run for 30 minutes, wrapping up at 8:30 AM PT / 11:30 AM ET / 3:30 PM GMT. While the servers are expected to be back online at that time, players might experience a server queue. This is nothing out of the ordinary, as many online games implement server queues at various times to help ease the strain of server load. There's on word on Bungie releasing a new patch or what the maintenance will entail exactly.

Destiny 2's big new expansion, Shadowkeep, and the New Light free-to-play version of the game, released on October 1. The rollout wasn't entirely smooth, as Bungie was forced to bring down the game's servers for several hours to perform "emergency maintenance." Things have improved significantly since, although there are a number of lingering issues, including one that impacts players' ability to get a key new item, the Gate Lord's Eye artifact.

Despite the hiccups on release day, Destiny 2 was able to reach more than 200,000 peak concurrent players on launch day on Steam alone. The game continues to be extremely popular. Steam's public statistics page shows the game reached 226,000 concurrent players on October 2, making it one of the most popular games on the whole of Steam.