Destiny 2’s most annoying crash has finally been fixed

Destiny 2’s latest patch, released this morning by developer Bungie, addresses one of the most frustrating bugs in the game.

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Destiny 2’s story campaign.]

Hotfix 1.0.3.2 went live shortly after 11 a.m. ET today during a period of network maintenance that did not require server downtime. Bungie’s patch notes only list one thing, but it’s a big one: “Fixed an issue that was causing crashes while loading into the Tower.”

Once you finish the Destiny 2 campaign, the game leaves behind the Farm for a brand-new social space, the Tower. It’s not the same Tower that existed in Destiny — no, that one is still a hunk of smoldering wreckage in the distance. The new Tower sits in the shadow of the Traveler, and it’s the Vanguard’s new base of operations. It’s home to the usual vendors and allies, like the class Vanguards, the Gunsmith, Master Rahool and clan steward Suraya Hawthorne. The Tower is where you go to pick up lost items from the Postmaster, to continue quest lines that require talking to an ally, to turn in tokens for loot, to access your vault — y’know, to make progress in the game.

In other words, Destiny 2 players have to visit the Tower regularly, so it’s pretty damn important that they be able to do so. However, many players have been banging their heads against a nasty bug that has existed since the game launched five weeks ago: The game sometimes crashed when they tried to load into the Tower. (Bungie’s patch notes don’t mention this, but almost all players who have reported this issue said they’re playing on PlayStation 4, not Xbox One.)

Some people never ran into this issue, including yours truly; for others, it was a common occurrence. “Getting in the tower is harder than completing the raid,” a Reddit user joked a few weeks ago. One Vox Media employee said today that the game “crashed 6 times in a row last night” during repeated attempts to visit the Tower.

Hopefully, players affected by this confounding bug can finally rest easy. It’s unclear if today’s hotfix also addresses a related but separate issue: that of the Tower taking ages to load (or never loading at all), with players sitting on a black screen but able to hear the sounds of being in the social space.

For more on Destiny 2, read our review. The game’s first Iron Banner event is live this week, and will end next Tuesday.