After many months, Bungie and Valve solve Destiny 2 ‘Beaver’ connection errors

Since the Windows PC version of Destiny 2 left Battle.net and came to Steam with Shadowkeep last fall, players have dealt with frequent disconnects. These errors, codenamed “Beaver” by Bungie, could disrupt all kinds of activities. But Bungie recently revealed that players should see far less of these errors in the future.

On Tuesday, the Bungie Help Twitter account posted an update saying that the studio had identified on July 16 the main causes for frequent “Beaver” errors on PC, and that actions to fix the problem “appear to have reduced errors significantly.”

In Bungie’s weekly blog post on Thursday, the studio offered some additional information on why the errors occurred in the first place:

This past week Valve identified hardware configuration issues with 4 relays in their Chicago, Virginia, Stockholm, and Dubai data centers. In each case, the affected relay was unable to send traffic to one other relay in the same data center. If a connection to a peer went through both of those relays, then it would drop. Valve has fixed the configuration issues, and we have confirmed that the rate of disconnections in the affected areas has been reduced significantly.

Bungie’s statement makes it sound like the errors were primarily on Steam’s end.

While Valve has solved its relay issues in those four data centers, players will still see “Beaver” errors if they disconnect for other reasons, including their own internet outages. However, players with fully functional internet connections should only run into “Beaver” errors during periods of in-game maintenance, when all players will likely see some disruption.

The “Beaver” errors first started appearing in October 2019, when Bungie launched Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and moved Destiny 2 from Battle.net to Steam on the same day. “Beaver” issues have since appeared frequently, keeping players from loading into the Tower or connecting to friends. On particularly bad days, we’ve seen players get ejected in the middle of endgame activities like Raids or Dungeons.

Since the fixes last week, we’ve yet to see a single “Beaver” error ourselves.