'Destiny 2' reaches new concurrent player milestone causing servers to shut down

Before the release of its latest expansion, "Destiny 2" was reportedly seeing a significant drop in the number of players. It was allegedly due to the lack of content and problems with certain gameplay mechanics. While the developer was quick to make some adjustments along the way, it was apparently too late to salvage the dwindling fan base.

However, with the release of "Destiny 2: Shadowkeep" this month, Bungie just reported a huge influx of new and returning players at launch. This eventually caused an unscheduled server downtime after too many accounts were logging in to play the sci-fi shooter.

According to the game studio, it was a necessary step because, at its peak, there were supposedly more than 200,000 users logged in. The fact that even more players were attempting to log in and play, Bungie felt it was time to take precautionary measures to avoid overloading the system.

A tweet from the developer stated: "'Destiny 1' and 'Destiny 2' are being taken offline for emergency maintenance."

At the time of writing this, the game servers should be up and running to allow gamers to sign back in. However, it was indicated that the waiting time might be longer than normal due to mostly a large number of users concurrently logging in.

IGN further points out that Bungie confirms players are encountering "Beaver and "Weasel" error codes upon login. The former comes up when the player's game system cannot communicate with another player's console. Meanwhile, the latter supposedly comes up if the users attempt to log into multiple platforms at once.

Cross-save functionality was recently added to allow "Destiny 2" players to share their progress across the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It should be noted that the cross-save option does not allow gamers on different systems to play together. Only the characters, items and progress are uploaded to the servers. This makes it convenient for gamers who own more than one platform to continue where they left off.

"Shadowkeep" is the first major expansion for "Destiny 2" entirely helmed by Bungie. After splitting ways with Activision earlier this year, journalists pointed out that the decision could benefit gamers. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that the shared-world shooter will adopt a free-to-play platform where gamers can just purchase the content they want.