Destiny 2's latest bug was caused by a ship that Bungie can't stop spawning in a rock

Destiny 2 image.
(Image credit: Bungie)

Destiny 2 is gearing up for the climax of its Season of the Lost, which has been gradually rolling out in the runup to The Witch Queen. The reception to it so far seems pretty positive, except there is one glitch that is (or I should say was) annoying a lot of players: after completing a step in a mission called Exorcism, Guardians were discovering that the game would often progress for the Fireteam leader, but not the rest of the Fireteam.

Bungie has kinda-sorta fixed the issue for the moment, while acknowledging that this is a bit of a botch job and a 'proper' fix will only come when it can be sure it won't put the kibosh on the whole expansion. Bungie community manager Dmg04 took to a thread in the Destiny subreddit to explain.

"The team has been digging on issues with the Exorcism mission since Tuesday morning. While they've been able to identify a few causes, we are unable to issue a hotfix at this time. The Witch Queen is in final stages of preparation and deploying a hotfix could cause some hiccups that we do not want to introduce."

This means basically players can go through the content, everything should trigger as normal, and the problem is out of sight, out of mind for the moment. What's interesting about this is what was causing the problem, and why Bungie hasn't yet fixed it 'properly.'

"Sometimes objectives require specific things to happen in the mission that are dependent on enemy spawns or set pieces happening around you as you play. As an example, one of the triggers in this mission requires a hive ship to finish its flight path as it assaults the Awoken structure."

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Basically, an alien ship is spawning inside and getting stuck on a rock. And all the Guardian power in all the world cannot do anything to stop the Witch Queen while that ship is stuck in that rock. And Bungie, apparently, can't hotfix this without potential domino effect.

"Somehow, this Hive ship is spawning in geometry," writes Dmg04. "As such, it's unable to move, or reach the 'checkpoint' that's required for the mission to progress. Oddly enough, this didn't come up in playtesting unless players specifically jumped onto Hive ships and forced them to fly off their preordained path!"

So now you know. The mission is progressing as it should for everyone, so that's the main thing, and who knows when Bungie will finally get around to sorting out their kamikaze pilot. Quite appropriate really, as Dmg04 themselves notes: "It’s quite fun to think that a disgruntled Hive pilot is doing their best to prevent this exorcism from happening..."

Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."