The original plan was that Destiny 2's raid would receive its harder Prestige Mode this past week, but an exploit caused developer Bungie to delay the release of Leviathan's Prestige Mode in order to fix things. And today Bungie confirmed that the Prestige Mode is still on track for next week's release, but the fix is taking more effort than initially planned.
According to Bungie, fixing the exploit would put the Prestige Mode at greater risk, so the team has decided to delay the patch but still launch the difficulty tier. However, it's worth mentioning that teams after the World First title for the mode will want to avoid using the exploit, as Destiny 2 will be able to tell if teams use it.
While there are a couple known exploits in Leviathan, Bungie did not specify which has led to the delay and which cannot be fixed in time. That being said, it is very likely the exploit that removes all enemies from the throne room during the final boss fight of the raid.
The intention of delaying the Prestige raid was to make sure a team looking to claim the title of World's First (or the quickest team to clear the raid's harder version) couldn't use the exploit to "cheese" the final encounter. The devs wanted to make sure the playing field was even and no record was tarnished by cheating.
Bungie said it has been working on a fix but "the short-term solution contains too much risk." There's a danger that fixing the glitch could actually break the raid for teams trying to complete it legitimately, which could hurt some World's First teams.
In the meantime, Leviathan Prestige will still launch on October 18 at 10 a.m. Pacific. And to avoid anyone cheesing the encounter using the exploit, Bungie says it has created a way to verify that teams finish without using the exploit. Bungie says it will "take some extra time to verify" a clean finish, but the developer is confident that the true World's First winner will be revealed on Wednesday.
Destiny 2 is available now for PS4 and Xbox One, and releases on October 24, 2017 for PC.