[UPDATE] Bungie has announced it's extending the maintenance period until 2 PM PST / 5 PM EST.

　　Maintenance is being extended to 14:00PM PDT. Thank you for your patience.

　　— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) April 7, 2016

　　The original story is below.

　　Bungie has announced that Destiny's servers will be offline today for maintenance for a period of up to four hours. Beginning today (April 7) at 8 AM PST, players will be blocked from logging in ahead of the maintenance, while at 9 AM PST, all players currently in the game will be removed. At this time, the servers will be taken offline, with the maintenance expected to be completed before 1 PM PST.

　　Outside of the game itself, Bungie.net sign-in and the companion app "may be restricted," Bungie explained in a notice on its website.

　　If you are signed in to Destiny before the maintenance begins today, a notification will pop up to alert you that you'll soon be booted from the game.

　　Bungie did not provide a specific reason for today's Destiny maintenance, but maintenance periods of this nature are not uncommon for Destiny and other online-heavy games.

　　In other news about Destiny, the game's story lead has left Bungie. Additionally, the game's next big update is coming on April 12. It comes with new things to do, more gear to earn, and changes to weapon balance and more.

　　Looking further out, a "large" Destiny expansion is coming this fall, while a full-on sequel will debut in 2017.