Ubisoft's latest maintenance for The Division 2 broke the game (now fixed)

What you need to know

• The Division 2 has had a weekly maintenance schedule pretty much since launch and usually, things go without trouble.
• That can't be said of the September 21 maintenance which has quite literally broken the game for many players.
• Ubisoft has acknowledged the issue with accessing characters and is working on a fix.

Update September 24: A fix for this issue has now been deployed and console players should be able to access their characters as normal.

Update September 23: The developers have identified the issue and are working on a fix. It seems to be linked to missing shaders for the Waveform holster and the BTSU Datagloves. If you have either of these items equipped, especially if you're on console, your characters will become invisible and if you log off you won't be able to log back in. A new forum post details the issue, and that a fix for the missing shaders will be pushed out. Additionally, the Golden Bullet event has been extended by a week to allow players the chance to catch up.

If you were hoping to sit down and relax with a little jaunt to Washington or New York in The Division 2 today, you'll probably want to rethink your plans. After the regular weekly maintenance, an issue has occurred which it's fair to say is a game-breaker.

Because many players can't access their characters. And without that, you can't play the game.

Ubisoft Support has acknowledged the issue:

The good news is that progress and any characters you've created, regular or hardcore, aren't actually affected, in so much that they still exist and you won't have to start over. So don't delete any characters.

Once the fix is deployed everything should be back to normal and you can hop back into the game. As noted in the follow-up tweet above, if you did completely delete a character in the course of all this, you'll need to hit them up to open up a ticket and try to get it back. For the rest of you, don't touch that dial.