Oops! Bungie rolled out Destiny 2's Rite of the Nine event three weeks early, and new loot is already dropping
Destiny 2 players got an exciting taste of the future when the Rite of the Nine event, which is set to go live on April 1 alongside the Heresy Act 3, went live today instead. Whoops.
The premature rollout was first noticed by Destiny Bulletin, which shared the mishap on X:
Rite of the Nine weapons are also dropping in the game, although the items are untextured placeholder versions. These weapons are reprisals from the three respective dungeons featured in the event: Prophecy, Spire of the Watcher, and Ghosts of the Deep. Despite their unfinished look, they're very much usable in-game as of time of writing—but don't expect that to last. Clearly, this isn't a case of content launching early as a surprise drop, but rather someone pushing the go live button a little early.
You can see the incomplete state of the weaponry in these images:
The event was apparently functional when it went live: PC Gamer's resident Destiny 2 habit-haver Tim Clark said he was able to load into the event, and able to select the higher 'Contest' difficulty level. Sure enough, the enemies were appropriately beefy.
That may not be the case by the time you read this: In a message posted to Bluesky, Bungie said the rollout was unintentional, and that all activities and related rewards will be disabled "as soon as possible." It's not clear whether the rewards will actually be taken away, or just locked until the time is right.
Rite of the Nine promises to be a pretty big deal. Dungeons are some of the most popular PvE activities in the game, and refreshing the look and perks on their weapons to bring them up to current meta levels will be enough of a carrot to bring players/degenerates back. Best of all, it's free for everyone: You don't need to own any season passes or The Final Shape expansion in order to get in on the action.
It's not the biggest botch ever, but Bungie has something of a history of biffin' it with Destiny 2: Exotic weapons that were deleting raid bosses in seconds, using fan art for an official collectible, accidentally changing the names of a "high number" of players, nerfing instead of buffing the drop rate of exotic items, the whole "Weightgate" thing, leaking the entire Final Shape expansion days before it was supposed to go live (although that was really a Sony issue)—and that doesn't even cover a full year of toe-stubs. I haven't touched Destiny 2 in years but I still have "fond" memories of the Prometheus Lens fiasco, and that was all the way back in 2017.
None of these are fatal wounds individually, but it just keeps happening, and taken altogether it makes me wonder, man, you've been running this game for nearly eight years—how hard is it to avoid tripping over the furniture? (Pretty hard, apparently.)
Anyway, Rite of the Nine's brief and unanticipated move into the light (get it?) will be over soon, if it's not already, but you won't have to wait too long for it to come back: It remains set to go live in full and proper form on April 1.
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