Bungie apologises for Destiny 2 connection issues following The Final Shape release

Bungie has apologised to Destiny 2 players for connection issues following the release of The Final Shape.

The long-awaited expansion was finally released on Monday after delays, and saw the game receiving a large increase in players.

According to SteamDB, the game hit a peak of 314,624 concurrent players on Steam, falling just short of its all-time highest Steam peak of 316,750 (which was due to the release of its Lightfall expansion in February 2023).

Despite (or perhaps because of) the spike in numbers, players reported that they were struggling to connect to the game or were missing cut-scenes due to temporary workarounds being discovered by the community.

In a thread on X, Bungie has now addressed the issues and said it’s hard at work trying to fix them.

“Hey everyone,” the message reads, “if connection issues have blocked you from playing or enjoying The Final Shape today, we want to apologise. We’re hard at work trying to resolve each of these issues as quickly as possible, and many of the connection issues from this morning have already been fixed.

The studio goes on to list some of the issues it’s addressed, including network-related sign-on issues and errors codenamed Honeydew, Weasel and Plum.

“Errors causing players to get kicked out of activities started at around 3.00pm (PT) and remains our highest priority issue to resolve,” it adds. “We believe we have identified the issue, and will be doing rolling server restarts soon to attempt to resolve this.

“If you missed a cutscene as a temporary workaround, you can replay the mission by accessing the Replayable Missions node in the middle of the Pale Heart map. There are cutscenes at the end of Mission 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

“We built The Final Shape to be an exciting, cathartic, story-driven adventure for everyone to enjoy. We’re truly sorry if connection issues and instability is getting in the way of that experience, and we promise to keep working until these issues are resolved.”

Following declining Destiny 2 player numbers and layoffs at Bungie, the studio reportedly has a lot riding on The Final Shape.

It was claimed in December that Bungie’s position as an independent subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment was under threat.

IGN previously reported that Bungie’s current board structure is contingent on it hitting certain financial goals, and that if it fails to do so, Sony could choose to dissolve the board and take full control.