Nobody can play Destiny 2 Season of the Deep because maintenance keeps getting extended

Destiny 2 Season of the Deep
(Image credit: Bungie)

Update: The big Destiny 2 Season of the Deep update has seemingly arrived after hours of technical issues. That's the good news. The bad news is that "due to increased traffic, login services to Destiny 2 are currently being throttled," as the login screen on my other monitor keeps telling me. 

You know the drill, folks. "Please stay on this screen until login services stabilize and you are logged into Destiny 2." At least the update is here and maintenance has concluded; just a little more patience and we'll be in the deep blue sea.   

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Original story follows.

Destiny 2 Season of the Deep is meant to start today, May 23, but at the time of writing, nobody's actually been able to play the new season because the MMO's regular maintenance downtime has already been extended multiple times.

A quick timeline, then. At 1:16pm ET, ahead of the expected 2pm ET maintenance end time, the Bungie Help Twitter account announced that "downtime has been extended" and "another update on this issue will be provided within one hour." This raised a red flag for everyone who's played Destiny 2 in the past, I don't know, six months. It's no secret that the servers have been struggling lately, no-doubt for a variety of reasons I don't fully understand, so the launch of the Season of the Deep always seemed a little dicey. 

Time passed. At 1:54pm ET, Bungie Help affirmed that "extended maintenance is still ongoing." 2:58pm ET rolled around and maintenance was still ongoing, with another update to be provided within an hour. That's the last we've heard at the time of writing, and we're now approximately 75 minutes past the initial projected start time for the Season of the Deep. 

Is that an unreasonable or unprecedented wait for an MMO content rollout? Not at all. I think the mounting frustration here is largely the result of months of technical issues now seemingly interfering with the release of new Destiny 2 content, but as ever, there are surely waves of technical nuance being missed here. Players want to play, devs also want players to play, and everyone undoubtedly wants the situation resolved as quickly as possible. 

The good news is the Season of the Deep looks quite good between underwater action, some gorgeous gear, and a friendly sea monster. And let's not forget the real show-stopper: a fishing minigame.  

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.