Destiny 2 players kidnap Xur for a full day to let more people buy god-roll guns

News
By published

One player spent 15 hours holding an instance with Xur in it

Destiny 2 Xur
(Image credit: Bungie)

Destiny 2 players have engineered a way to kidnap Xur the Exotic merchant in order to buy more guns from his time-limited inventory. 

Ordinarily, Xur arrives on Fridays and leaves with each weekly Tuesday reset. However, players have begun prolonging Xur's visits by stubbornly staying in-game after going to see him. If you load into a destination with Xur around, you see, he'll still be there even after the weekly reset as long as you don't log out or go to orbit. 

The catalyst for this makeshift kidnapping, which has understandably been dubbed the Xur hostage situation in the Destiny community, was a surprise update to Xur's most recent inventory. Xur sells the same Exotics each weekend, but judging from the data on supporting apps, his newly added selection of Legendary gear uses the same timers as normal vendors, meaning players would be able to buy from a new array of guns if they could convince (read: strong-arm) Xur to stay a bit longer after reset. A new and pretty solid roll on the True Prophecy hand cannon, in particular, proved to be just the motivation players needed last weekend, and they stopped just short of tying Xur to a tree on Nessus. 

That's where players like Reddit user Klip_twings come in. As they explained, they spent roughly 15 combined hours holding down an instance on Nessus so that more players – upwards of 350 by their estimate – could access Xur's updated inventory. Whenever they had to log off, they'd have a friend hop on to hold the instance in their place – anything to keep the gates open. This lasted well into Wednesday, a full day after the weekly reset, until the hosts finally dried up due to a combination of time and technical limits. It's unclear how long this workaround will be viable, but you might want to keep your eyes peeled for some last-minute Xur updates come Tuesday. 

Here's the Destiny 2 Xur inventory for October 29, for those wondering.

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.