Destiny 2 has plenty of activities for players, whether they’re chasing fashion, exploring a destination, or chasing a roll of their favorite weapon.
Despite its vast array of options, players can only dive into Destiny 2 if the servers work. If the servers are facing outages or interruptions, you will see the classic “Server Offline” message when you try to log in—an indication that there’s something wrong with the servers.
The Destiny 2 servers can go down for a series of reasons. The servers usually undergo a short maintenance window before the release of a hotfix, kicking players from all activities. This period usually lasts around two hours and 15 minutes (and we miss the days when the downtime was just 15 minutes). Bigger content drops, such as seasons and expansions, usually come with a longer maintenance window. These can take several hours, and in the case of expansions, can even bring some overnight outages.
There’s also the possibility that Destiny 2 is undergoing emergency maintenance due to an unforeseen issue. Connectivity problems can make the servers unreachable, and Bungie can bring the servers offline as it investigates bugs, glitches, and errors in the game. This is evidently a drastic measure, meaning its underlying causes are bound to be serious enough to warrant the developer cutting off access to the game.
If you can’t connect to Destiny 2, there is bound to be a reason, whether it’s part of a schedule or an isolated incident. Here’s why the Destiny 2 servers are down.
Why are the Destiny 2 servers not available? Server maintenance details
Bungie has been deploying hotfixes in what feels like a much more regular cadence lately compared to previous years, with somewhat unexpected maintenance windows close to resets when patches launch. Downtime has also evolved to a few hours instead of just 15 minutes.
Because of this, players can often load their game and find a surprise maintenance screen or a stealthy error code CAT when they’re sure the game is fully up-to-date. This is usually because the game is undergoing maintenance. Generally, these maintenance downtime windows kick off at 8:45am CT and end at reset, with daylight saving time changing those hours for the United States only.
The developer may sometimes have maintenance windows in quick succession, such as on Nov. 19 and Nov. 20, 2024. The servers went down for the release of Revenant’s Act Two on the 19th, but Bungie required an additional maintenance window on Nov. 20.
If you kept up with Bungie Help accounts over the past years, the early-warning window for updates has become considerably shorter, with announcements sometimes coming 10ish hours before the downtime kicks off. You may miss those if you’re in a different timezone or if you weren’t up to speed with the server maintenance status pages. Stay tuned to the studio’s official support social media channels or on the fanmade bungiehelp.org to know when the next downtime takes place.
When will the Destiny 2 servers be back up?
Generally, non-emergency downtime follows a general, somewhat regular schedule. Planned downtime usually returns by the daily reset, but Bungie may run into service issues that delay the return of the Destiny 2 servers.
There is also the chance Bungie will run into technical issues when deploying the update, so be sure to check out BungieHelp’s social media channel for real-time updates. The account will warn players when the latest version of Destiny 2 is available and link to the patch notes, letting you know what’s changed in the new patch. In the case of interruptions, you can also find more details on the page.
In the case of the Nov. 20 maintenance, the servers should come back online after 1pm CT, if Bungie sticks to the new schedule. The developer extended the downtime by at least two hours, which usually happens in the event of server problems. This might come as a surprise for players, however: not only did the downtime have little early warning, but it was also supposed to be a routine maintenance operation. The release of Revenant’s Act Two (with a decently sized patch) also went smoothly, so the extended downtime can catch players off-guard and keep you waiting in the lobby for longer.
