The rumors are true: your Destiny characters from the Beta version of the game are being deleted. More accurately, they've already been deleted. Take a minute to pour one out, or perhaps fall to the floor consumed with grief. It's OK. This is a safe place.

Bungie made the announcement this week in response to what it said was the question everyone had been asking since the Beta closed. The official answer to the question of whether Beta characters will transfer over is, well, "no." This means your starter weapons and character customization, your experience and levels, won't transfer to the release version of the game. "The vaults have been cleaned out," Bungie said.The decision to not have characters from the Beta carry over to the release arose from realizations that improvements made to the game would have rendered the characters nigh unusable. Tyson Green, a designer at Bungie, explains that characters from the Beta ended up in "strange shape that would be confusing at best, broken at worst." This is due to the amount of balancing and tweaking that has been done to the game as a result of feedback from the Beta.The game, which will release September 9, is already breaking records in a gaming landscape where pre-orders are on the decline

Seth Macy is a freelance writer who likes taking photos. Follow him on Twitter @sethmacy , and MyIGN at sethgmacy