Destiny 2 Has Hit Its Lowest Player Count In Franchise History

Destiny 2 has had a rough year, after an intense, rough couple of weeks involving layoffs and revelations about the health of the game and the company. A lot of factors have combined to produce a new playercount low, at least from the metrics we can track.

Judging by Steam numbers, a significant portion of the playerbase, in the last 30 days the game’s average playercount was 34,816 and its peak playercount was 59,076. Those are both all-time lows, ever since the game was first released on Steam.

[Kaii]

"Looks up my D2 comment 110D Ago"
Bungie at GDC "Beware of overdelivering, quality doesn't matter, a live service being fast is more important than quality"

Could've fooled me 🙄

[Cacabunga]

This is a very old game

[Angyobangyo]

Warframe is older yet has a higher concurrent player count. It's nothing to do with being old, it's a lot to do with how devs handle the game and Bungie has put more effort into the Eververse and Season Passes over the years than the actual game.

[Cacabunga]

Ok an old game not having same player count doesnt mean it is bad..
can be newer games looking better are providing same fun factor..

Fat Princess community on PS3 is still very strong and many are still playing it. Because there ain’t anything like it

[TreMillz]

He's right, live service games need constant content to keep players engaged. The results of reducing content for higher quality still results in player loss.

[Rols]

Probably a lot of gullible people are playing MW3 after your BS review Forbes.

[Tnt123]

Have even tried it iam far from a sheep I bought and it's the best multiplayer being in yrs for me

[sparky77]

Yikes.

Sony really should have held off buying Bungie sounds like they got played and overpaid, no wonder MS passed on them.

And to think they are the ones heading up Sony's GaaS initiative, that TLOU factions game might have actually been good.

[LabRat]

I mean, 34k players for a 6 year old game is pretty good. Way better than any of MS live service games (Halo, Sea of Thieves, etc.) Those games are at like 5k concurrent.

[sparky77]

It's not a 6 year old game though it just released a new expansion if I remember correctly.

And look how old games like WoW, Fortnite, Minecraft, COD etc are and they aren't having all time lows.

As for MS games the majority of their players are on Game Pass so they likely all have higher numbers than Destiny.

[remixx116]

@sparky

He's right though, als releasing a new expansion back in february does not stop it ftom being an old game.

Desyiny 2 came out in september of 2017.

Also Cod literally just released a sequel so of course its not having sll time lows.

Your last point has no credibility, your just hoping the statement is true.

D2 isnt great right now but still

[mrcatastropheAF]

The bulk of Halo Infinite's player count sits on Xbox and Game Pass for PC, not steam lol. Can guarantee far more people are playing Halo Infinite than Destiny 2 all platforms considered

[crazyCoconuts]

I didn't know about overpaid, but an interesting way to look at that is Sony paid 5% of what MS paid for Activision/Blizzard.

[crazyCoconuts]

So I guess revenue wise $8B vs $200M, so Sony paid 5% for something that generates $2.5% of Act/Blzd revenue. Looks like comparatively MS got a much better deal

[Obscure_Observer]

The sum Sony paid Bungie for talent retention alone is worth of 1/3 of the whole deal.

Sony paid a sum worth of 4 Insomniac Games studios to prevent people from leaving Bungie and still 100+ people got fired after just one year as a Playstation first party studio, not to mention both new game and Destiny 2´s next expansion getting pushed back which might only contribute for even lower player count and engagement.

So yeah, imo, it was overpaid.

[frostypants]

It's all about Marathon now. They didn't buy them for Destiny 2. It was old news when the purchase happened.

[Crows90]

Isnt destiny 2 a super old game now?

Very few live service games actually succeed like destiny 2 has...it's about time their player count reduces...still higher than many other games.

I hope they move on soon to other IP.

I'm curious what Bungie could do with an IP like resistance

[crazyCoconuts]

Would love to see them put out some solid FPS games, preferably not more Destiny. That light/dark religion thing they for going on doesn't interest me at all

[ravens52]

Probably nothing considering they only want to make multiplatform games.

[Crows90]

When money doesn't come in lots can change.

[Gameseeker_Frampt]

@Crows90

Age has nothing to do with it. Sony just paid $3.6 billion for Bungie, who's only game is at its worst point ever and that is a result of all the supposed Bungie live-service experience that Sony paid so much for. Many of the games that are beating Destiny 2 in Steam player count are as old or older than Destiny 2.

[RAFTECH26]

Everyone is running COD.
And it’s over for D2…. Sad

Dumb casuals

[Snookies12]

How about they move on to Destiny 3 instead then. They lost me when they continued on the trend from the first game in locking people out of previously accessible content upon a DLC release. I was a HUGE Destiny fan back in the day too. Like probably being in the top 20-30 teams for first clears of raid content upon release.

The developers are scummy though. That's what made me lose my taste for the game. Despite the gameplay being amazing. Always said I MIGHT try Destiny 3. If they ever release it. They've burned me twice now though, through poor practices with locking content we had access to on both games. So, I'm not holding my breath on that.

[CrashMania]

And to think these guys had a say on whether ND were making a food factions game or not. Jim should never have paid that ridiculous price for Bungie, could when gone on much better things.

[Rude-ro]

Why the hyperbole?
Bungie has created two franchises that have now lasted at least a decade.

Just because the numbers have dipped does not mean failure.
Halo would dream of the daily numbers per destiny’s low but not even close.

[jznrpg]

The game is 6 years old

[Tnt123]

But it's had plenty of expansions so technically it's not 6 yrs old cos they keep updating it

[proudly_X]

But you keep calling GTAV an old game.. so technically GTAV is a new game..

[ocelot07]

@proudly_X

Yup GTA V is brand spanking new should win game of the year this year since it had some extra content during Halloween.

Don't forget about that brand new release World of warcraft. Don't matter if it released 19 years ago. It had new content last week so it's a brand new game /s.

[TheColbertinator]

lmao correct

[Gameseeker_Frampt]

@jznrpg

"The game is 6 years old"

How do you explain that just this year Destiny 2 had its highest player count since releasing on Steam?

[Yui_Suzumiya]

Now worried about how Marathon's launch is going to fare.

[CoNn3rB]

Check again next week when the next season drops. Player count always "dies" at the end of a season

[ChasterMies]

Folks here want to have some excuse for Destiny being an old game but Bungie themselves told their people that Destiny missed sales projections by 45%. Lots of old games thrive. Steam charts are dominated by old games. Call of Duty still has a sixes or player base 22 years later. GTA V is still a top 10 seller and it’s a year older than Destiny. Those games are doing things right that Destiny is doing wrong. Bungie’s management needs a shakeup.

[Daeloki]

I used to play Destiny religiously, ever since day one of D1. It was my favourite shooter for so long. But in the past 5 years or so it just turned so incredibly deceptively toxic, and I don't mean (just) the players. The constant grind on seasonal cosmetics (that I never ended up using anyway), stressing about completing limited time events, the crippling FOMO whenever I played anything else instead of progressing on the season. Whenever I completed any goals I was grinding towards, I just felt empty rather than happy about the reward. It took me so long to realize how horrible it was, I feel like I was in an abusive relationship. And the worst part is I still look back at D2 whenever I happen to see clips of new abilities, dungeons or new fancy cosmetics, wondering if I should get back into it. I was so close to buying this year just because I thought the halloween armor set looked cool.

[BISHOP-BRASIL]

That's all live service games/GaaS though... I feel exactly the same about The Division. Left 2 years ago, it was literally ruining gaming for me.

[Daeloki]

Oh yeah true, didn't mean to imply it was a Destiny problem only, just that Destiny is probably the only one I played. I also have a friend who playes LoL and just a while ago he was complaining how he doesn't have time to play Baldurs Gate with me because he has to finish grinding for some event and it's deadline was coming up xD

[anast]

Their monetization schemes sucked the fun out of this game for me.

[DefenderOfDoom2]

So it has been reported that Final Shape has been delayed but Bungie has not made a official announcement abou a t Final Shape delay yet.

[Mikeyy]

I played Destiny 2 when it first came out and by the time the 2nd expansion came out I moved on to other things. Game is expensive as hell, and now 30 expansions later I don't know how much I'd even have to pay to start playing again today, so I don't even bother. Probably a lot of people feel this way.

[GamingManiac]

Good, let the game die finally!

[Ryuk_2007]

Imagine paying $3.6 billion for a dead game. No wonder Jim got fired lol

[AdonisIsBeast]

They keep pushing so much woke nonsense it’s also a driving factor to the decline. Whether they would like to admit it or not. Not to mention they offended about 65 million hispanics with their “LatinX” made up virtue signaling.

[DefenderOfDoom2]

So I bought every expansion and played the season that comes with expansion for 2 to months and then I stop playing until next expansion comes out . I don't buy every season because I get tired of doing the same things over and over again .

[Einhander1972]

This is pretty misleading, these numbers are not significantly lower than other points in the games history. It's an ebb and flow, it peaks after a new expansion then ebbs until the next expansion.

This is how all live service games work.

And let's be fair as was pointed out, it's still doing a lot better than Microsoft's games.

Destiny 2 is the 38's most played game on steam.

Ahead of Overwatch 2 41

Starfield 75

ESO 81

Grounded 122

Forza Horizon 5 124

Sea of Thieves 129

Micrsoft Flight Simulator 141

Diablo 4 165

Age of Empires 3 173

Halo Infinite 231 3272 Players 15,824 peak

The recently released mega bomb Forza Motorsport which I had to search for because i got sick of clicking through pages has 996 players and 30 avg 1294 and a -41% drop in users in the last 30 days.

So yeah, seems like Destiny is going to be just fine.

[RAFTECH26]

That’s ok. Sony is making 12 more!

Either Wolverine or Last of us remake will be GOTY!

[jznrpg]

Wolverine I could see as a contender

[TheColbertinator]

Sony ruined them. We need to be honest.

[Gameseeker_Frampt]

The only place Destiny 2 is popular right now is N4G and that is just because Sony bought them. It is clear that most of the people making up the excuses didn't read the article or play Destiny 2. The excuse that the low player count is just because Destiny 2 is 6 years old is pathetic because just this year Destiny 2 had its highest player count since launching on Steam. Destiny 2 just had one of its best seasons yet the player count for Oct. 2023 is about 50% less than Oct. 2022, which was during one of the worst seasons in Destiny 2. Bungie themselves said Destiny 2 is failing and fired 100 people - many who have been with the company since Halo - yet N4G fanatics try to deflect this back on Microsoft and how their games are doing.

Sony paid $3.6 billion for a company and their expertise and the only game that company has is failing.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

This game old as fuq.

[StarkR3ality]

Good, the sooner this fails the sooner publishers can take note. I don't want Bungie as a studio to lose staff or go under, but I do wants them to get back to their Halo roots and fuck this dead horse off.

Destiny 2 is the only console live service game I can think of that's an out and out success. If the Titan of the genre fails, we will be less likely to see this cancer in the future. I enjoyed Destiny at points when they were releasing good content i.e Taken King, Witch Queen, but those moments were few and far between, that was filled with greedy boring dross.

Hope Sony gets the message and goes back to what they do best. Single player cinematic experiences. I don't go to Subway to order a fucking Big Mac.

Sorry for the rant but I hate these live service games so so so much.

[mrcatastropheAF]

Hold on wait, so since this is a Sony owned studio can we infer incompetence on Sony's end like yall do for MS when the shoe is on the other foot?

[nibblo]

But hey it's been nominated for best community support at the Game Awards! Maybe because of the dropping player count it's easier to support them?

[FernDiggidy]

LET'S FUCKING GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Zenzuu]

It's time Bungie stop it with Destiny and focus on making a brand new IP single player game.

[StarkR3ality]

Doesn't need to be a single player only title, but Sony if anything are crying out for a first person shooter, their portfolio at this point is very very samey even if you enjoy their games.

They can branch out without having to turn to live service bull shit

[Jingsing]

"Judging by Steam numbers" I assume none of these journalists did basic science. Saying judging by Steam numbers is like saying I took a cup to the ocean and filled it with water so therefore must conclude there are no fish in the sea. Sample sizes matter Forbes, Steam is a low sample size for most multiplayer games.