Destiny 2 downtime complete, gauntlet logo with similarities to "hate symbol" removed
Servers for Destiny 2, as well as the first Destiny, went offline today as part of scheduled maintenance, but a snafu occurred in Destiny 2 forcing Bungie to extend downtime twice.
Destiny 2's first scheduled maintenance was expected to last four hours, bringing down game servers as well as possibly affecting Bungie.net and the companion app.
Although Bungie didn't provide details on the downtime, we had hoped to see some action on the list of Destiny 2 error codes and known Destiny 2 issues we're tracking as part of our Destiny 2 guide.
But something intervened: the maintenance was extended by an hour, and Bungie announced we'd see a Destiny 2 hotfix in its wake.
That probably isn't what blew out the downtime, though: the developer also suddenly announced a change to one of the gauntlet sets in Destiny 2, which it said "shares elements with a hate symbol."
Bungie said this was unintentional, and it is working to fix it right now.
Bungie didn't elaborate on which gauntlet features the offending symbol, but some sleuthing by folks over on the Destiny subreddit, believe it's the Road Complex AA1. Apparently, the symbol's design is similar to that of the "Kekistani" flag used by neo-nazi groups.
In the wake of this revelation, Destiny 2's downtime was blown out a further two hours, bringing the total maintenance window to seven hours instead of four.
Happily, there were no further delays and the Destiny 2 servers came back online as schedule.
According to the latest update from Bungie on the gauntlet situation, the in-game imagery has been changed and a later patch will address menu view.
And that's the story of how a bit of unthinking design work kept us all out of Destiny 2 for three hours longer than we wanted.