Destiny 2 patches the Xur hostage exploit – killing a community of 1700 players in the process

For the Wardens out there tuned into Destiny 2, you’ll be familiar with the news posts from This Week at Bungie, which provide a constant update on what’s to come in the popular sci-fi MMOFPS. They don’t always bring good news, however, as the May 19 issue of TWAB announced that Xur, the NPC that offers exotics and other valuable weapons, is undergoing some changes, small but essentially a passionate one Subcommunity killed by Destiny players.

But first, an explanation of how these players messed around with the game. Xur, the squid-faced NPC who has long been a popular character in the Destiny series, works on a weekly cycle. He disappears for a few days between Tuesday and Thursday before popping up in a random location on one of the game’s open world maps over the weekend with a fresh inventory of exotic weapons, armor, and legendary gear for sale.

As you can imagine, it is always worth a visit for every player! Newer Wardens can often snag a new exotic to play around with, while the hardcore stat-focused community can snag a particularly awesome piece every now and then. But what if Xur doesn’t have something you need? Well, join the Xur Instances Discord community.

This community would settle right next to Xur as he was to depart and not leave, keeping him in one instance and open for business when he should have settled down for some much-needed rest and recreation. From there, players who have been waiting for her after the daily reset will see a new set of items in Xur’s inventory. The weapons you would see are the same as those that would normally appear over the weekend, but with a different stat role. This essentially doubles your chances of getting a “God Roll” – an excellent piece of gear.

This practice, colloquially known in Destiny 2 circles as holding Xur hostage, is clearly not an intended feature and something that has been written on the walls for a while. Banshee – the gunsmith in The Tower – used to have a similar exploit that was removed from the game a while back. Nonetheless, the news remained sad for Xur Instance Discord admin and established Xur hostage taker Özberix.

“My reaction was a bit of sadness as I was looking forward to trying each week,” Ozberix writes on Discord. “I’m active on other servers where I post my Xur instances. [When] I shared the news with these servers, most people would reply with variations of “F” from members to other mods or admins. With this particular Xur server, the owner made an announcement and decided to implode the servers on top of each other and have a server party. In conclusion, I think most of us are discouraged, but we expected Bungie to patch it at some point.”

“Since the release of Witch Queen, we’ve had the bug where most of the drops were appearing [stat scores] were over 40 years in total and with almost weekly maintenance, demand and availability had slowed. Also a few months ago we noticed Banshee reels being patched and we all thought the time would come when this would be patched permanently.”

This feeling was shared by the owner of the server Eyeliviawho came to the decision to start this Discord farewell party. “It’s a bit sad I guess, waiting at Xur every weekly reset was like a small event in its own way, but I think it was inevitable that Bungie stopped it.”

This party, which started with an announcement on the Xur Instances Discord, gave each member admin privileges. Almost immediately, the discord lit up with pings, memes, copypasta, and heartfelt goodbyes. Since then, members including Ozberix and Eyelivia have started posting alternative servers for those who wish to keep in touch with friends from Xur instances to congregate. The server has currently been left in the hands of Ozberix, who is still figuring out what to do with it in the future.

“I love this game and I love the community that has been built and I love helping people with GMs and other PvE activities each season. I would like to keep the community that has gathered on the Xur server and either merge it or make it another Destiny 2 server, although these are still discussions that are still going on internally as the future of the server as a whole is unknown is.

For more Destiny 2 content, check out our Guardian Games 2022 Shoot to Score guide, as well as this report on the Federal Trade Commission investigation into Sony’s acquisition of Bungie.