Destiny 2 players spent the past week trying to prove 'Weightgate,' one of the biggest conspiracies in the history of the game. And it turns out, 'Weightgate,' might be true: 'We're now investigating a possible issue within our code.'

Bungie released Vesper's host, the newest dungeon in Destiny 2, earlier this month. It's a good time, a fun reprise of some of the mechanics that were introduced in the Deep Stone Crypt Raid and with some unique encounters of bosses. It's a great job all around. There won't be any major drama resulting from it.

There has been a week of drama in response to it.

VS Chill Inhibitor is a grenade-launcher that's hidden in the dungeon loot table. It can be paired with the new perk Envious arsenal, which automatically reloads your magazine when you deal damage to other enemies. It can also be paired with Bait and Switch - a perk which gives a 30% bonus to damage when you use your other weapons. It's a perfect combination--absurdly desirable in terms of boss damage phases. People started farming for it immediately, repeating the dungeon encounter's first encounter repeatedly for a chance at getting that specific roll.

The perk combo was not dropping for some people.

Light.gg uses the API to scrape stats on weapon perks from player inventories. In the third column, Envious Arsenal is ranked second. Bait and Switch is the second most popular perk. Envious Arsenal with Bait and Switch? It's not even in the top eight most popular combos.

This led to the "Weightgate" conspiracy theory that Bungie deliberately tipped the scales so the most desirable weapon RNG rolls were much rarer. This would encourage players to keep returning to the slot-machine of weapon RNG to have another go. Some players tried to investigate this phenomenon, using data from players who collectively farmed thousands of encounters. All of this wasn't conclusive. Players who already had the Envious Arsenal/Bait & Switch combo would stop farming for it, so any sample that includes people with thousands of clears will only include those who don't.

Bungie's statement to the community felt very definitive: "There is not perk weighting for any legendary weapons in Destiny 2." The data was flawed, but still felt right, based on the players' own experiences.

As it turns out, those who doubted were probably right. Vendetta, a streamer, proposed a "new brand of copium", the perk proximity hypothesis. This theory suggests that perks listed near each other in the API have a higher chance of dropping together. According to a Twitter user named Newo's drop analysis, this theory seems to be true.

This analysis shows that the proximity of a perk in the code is a good indicator of the drop chance. It seems to apply to more than the new weapons.

Light.gg has now made a page that displays graphs for all of the game's weapons, and the evidence--particularly for those from recent episodes--seems pretty clear. There are many graphs that show the diagonal gradient that indicates a perk is having an impact.

Bungie responded once again, reaffirming "there is not intentional perk-weighting on weapons in our content setup", but confirming the studio is investigating "a possible issue within our code regarding how RNG perks generated".

This is why this topic has been a major discussion among the Destiny 2 Community: it's crucial that players have confidence in the fairness and integrity of the system. Anyone who has played enough loot-driven games will have horror stories of bad luck. RNG that makes you feel like an invisible hand is stopping you from getting what you want. In a strange way, this is part of the fun. In a fair system, you could win big by running the next. This is a very different situation if you are actually being prevented from getting what you desire.

In the end, I think that Light.gg admins are pretty right on this.

Bungie's studio is viewed by many as a cynic who will do whatever it takes to increase engagement metrics. Destiny 2's extensive API gives the community all the tools they need to 'catch up' on any current issues affecting weapon perks. It would be a shame to deliberately try to fudge numbers when so much raw data is readily available.

Funny that this drama is surfacing at the same time Bungie has begun work to deprioritize the weapon crafting system. There's no way to know how extensive weapon-crafting will be in the future, but as of now, none of the new weapons for this season are craftable. They all rely on RNG. It's probably best to avoid spending hundreds of runs on farming god rolls versus Chill Inhibitor for the time being. At least until Bungie's investigations are complete.