Screenshot: Bungie
Two days in the past, Bungie turned off the Future 2 servers whereas the studio appeared into an issue that had gamers apparently dropping progress on in-game challenges. This outage lasted a bit longer than everybody anticipated, with the free-to-play loot shooter remaining offline for almost 20 hours. So what occurred? In the present day Bungie pulled again the curtain and defined precisely what went improper and why it needed to roll again the sport, erasing a number of hours of parents’ quest progress within the course of.
On January 24 at round 2:00 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it was taking Future 2 offline whereas it investigated an “ongoing difficulty inflicting sure Triumphs, Seals, and Catalysts to lose progress for gamers.” A couple of hours later, at 5:51 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it had probably discovered a repair for the difficulty and was testing it, however was unable to specify when or if Future 2’s servers would come again on-line. Almost 4 hours later, Bungie tweeted for the final time that night time, saying that Future 2 wouldn’t be playable that night. Almost 12 hours later, at round 9:55 a.m, Bungie introduced it had lastly solved the issue and servers can be coming again on-line following a hotfix. The almost 20 hours of downtime had some gamers frightened concerning the sport’s well being, and its future. After years of bugs and damaged updates, it was actually beginning to really feel just like the seven-year-old shooter was being held along with duct tape.
So what occurred throughout these 20 hours and why was the sport down for therefore lengthy, seemingly with little warning? Bungie has defined what broke, why, and the way it was mounted in its newest weblog publish. And surprisingly, the developer is extra clear than you would possibly assume, going into technical particulars of the difficulty.
In keeping with Bungie, shortly after releasing a earlier replace for the sport (Hotfix 6.3.0.5) gamers started reporting that many Triumphs, Seals, and catalysts had vanished. Bungie realized that this was being precipitated after it moved some “at present incompletable” challenges into a distinct space of the sport’s knowledge. To do that, Bungie used a “very highly effective” instrument that lets the studio tinker with a participant’s sport state and account. Apparently, attributable to a configuration error, Bungie unintentionally “re-ran an older state migration course of” utilized in a previous replace. Due to this error, the instrument copied outdated knowledge from this previous replace into the present model of the sport, which principally undid some gamers’ latest in-game accomplishments
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“As soon as we recognized that the difficulty resulted in a lack of participant state,” wrote Bungie, “we took the sport down and rolled again the participant database whereas we investigated easy methods to take away the harmful change from the construct.”
After creating a brand new patch that eliminated the mistaken change the difficulty was mounted, and following some testing, Bugnie deployed the replace. Nonetheless, on account of this patch, all participant accounts needed to be rolled again a number of hours earlier than the troublesome replace went stay. This implies any participant progress made between 8:20 and 11 a.m. on January 24 was misplaced. Any purchases made throughout this time received refunded, too.
Whereas it sucks that the sport was down for therefore lengthy and that the group was pressured to spend what appears like many late hours attempting to repair their mistake, it’s refreshing to see a developer be so open and trustworthy about what occurred and the way it was mounted. In a time when video games really feel buggier than ever and gamers are fed up with delays, outages, and damaged updates, it’s sensible to drag again the curtain and present everybody simply how exhausting it’s to make, preserve, and maintain video video games as complicated as Future 2.
Hopefully, subsequent month’s new Future 2 enlargement, Lightfall, and the upcoming Season 20 rollout will go a little bit smoother than this latest 20-hour hiccup.