Oops! Destiny 2 PC players were able to acquire a PS4-exclusive exotic weapon
It looks like Bungie's got some explaining to do.
Destiny 2's Wavesplitter exotic trace rifle is one sweet piece of firepower. It is also, until September, exclusive to the PlayStation 4. Which is why some players, such as Cloud_Fish, were excited but also confused when they discovered that they'd acquired the weapon despite playing on non-PS4 platforms.
You can probably guess where this is going.
As detailed in today's 2.2.1 patch notes, Fated Engrams sold by the snake-faced exotic merchant Xur now have the chance to drop exotic items from the Forsaken expansion—and Bungie, apparently, forgot to exclude Wavesplitter from that pool. As a result, they were briefly available to everyone, on all platforms, before Bungie "fixed" the issue.
The good news is that non-PlayStation players who managed to get their hands on a Wavesplitter before Bungie plugged the leak will get to keep it. The bad news, community manager Chris "Cozmo" Shannon wrote on the Bungie forums, is that non-PS4 players won't be able to equip them until Wavesplitter goes into the general exotic loot pool in September. Until then, you can look, but you can't touch.
There's some obvious frustration in the comments that "shit like this gets fixed immediately," while "bugs and balance issues" take weeks to straighten out, and a few respondents ask why Bungie doesn't just make it available to everyone, since it's leaked anyway. But as several others point out, there's a contractual obligation here: Regardless of how you feel about exclusives, Bungie did a one-year deal with Sony and it can't just wave that away because it Bungie'd an update. I imagine that this brief leak alone will leave it with some serious explaining to do.
But hey, look on the bright side: September is only five months away.
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.
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