Destiny's beta is down today for maintenance, but it's coming back soon

The beta test for developer Bungie’s sci-fi shooter Destiny is over … for now.

The studio is taking the game offline for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 today as part of two days of scheduled maintenance. Bungie will hit their servers with hammers, maybe update some code, and check their negative power coupling with a hydrospanner. When it’s done, it will relaunch the beta test on Wednesday. At that time, the Xbox One and Xbox 360 beta will join the PlayStation versions, and players on all supported platforms will get to go online and shoot alien scum. The beta runs through 11:59 p.m. Pacific on Sunday.

We are beginning the process of taking the Destiny Beta offline for maintenance. It shall return on 7/23 for all registered testers.

— Bungie (@Bungie) July 21, 2014

Bungie planned this maintenance all along, but we’ve reached out to the studio to ask if it found anything unexpected during the beta. We’ve also asked whether it is making any changes that players will notice once they return to action. We’ll update this post with any new information.

The beta test has certainly drawn the attention of gamers. Anyone who preorders the game gets a code to get into the beta, and Bungie invited thousands of other players to try it as well. That was enough to cause some issues for PlayStation Network. The huge influx of players looking to partake in some sweet Destiny action took PSN down intermittently on Friday. That’s likely one of the things Destiny and the platform holders were hoping to uncover and address with this test.

Destiny is the first Bungie game since the company purchased its independence from Microsoft. After producing a number of Halo games for that Xbox corporation, the studio is now working with Call of Duty publisher Activision on its current game.

The final version of Destiny will launch for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 3 on Sept. 9.