Destiny 2‘s Dawning 2024 kicked off today with an unexpected holiday gift: a free event card upgrade, to the joy of the game’s community. Shortly after, however, Bungie disabled the freebie—and most of the event’s progression systems along with it.
“Due to disabling the Dawning Event Card, all Event Card Triumphs and progression are on hold until the main issue is resolved,” the studio wrote on social media today, just half an hour after saying progress would continue normally. This means most of the core objectives in the Dawning are not available, though players can still earn Dawning currencies and advance quests. It’s unclear if any progress made during the outage will be retroactive.
Event cards are arguably the backbone of Destiny 2‘s seasonal events. A card works as a free-to-play checklist with challenges and rewards tied to it. Completing these objectives gives you weapons and cosmetics related to whatever festivities are going on.
The glitch that caused the Dawning to fall apart, however, was triggered by the event card upgrade. These extra microtransactions are cosmetic-only mini season passes while the celebrations are running. You get a few cosmetics immediately for buying the upgrade for 1,000 Silver ($10), but completing the remainder of the event challenges gets you tickets to unlock the remaining visuals in the upgraded event card.
Normally, upgrading an event card costs 1,000 Silver, Destiny 2‘s premium currency. During the first hour of this year’s event, however, clicking the Upgrade Event Card button gave access to the whole offerings for free—including three cosmetics acquired by opening the pack.
Players who opened the pack from the in-game store received the Rime of the Season shader, the Cozy Cat emote, and the Gift Wrapped sparrow. It’s unclear if Bungie will remove these from players’ inventories once the situation stabilizes.
Event cards were introduced in 2022, during a time of high popularity in Destiny 2—though that didn’t help the acceptance of these new microtransactions. When they released, event cards cost the equivalent of a full season or a specific Silver-only ornament. They’re still two-thirds of the cost of an episode—the successor to Destiny 2‘s seasons that feels a lot like a slowed-down season.
Though the event card is disabled, players can still gather Dawning Essence and Dawning Spirit and bake as many cookies as they can. Quests and bounties are also working. That said, it might be best to hold off on playing until it’s back, and some content creators like glitchmaster extraordinaire Cheese Forever are advising players not to log in.
