In October 2019, Destiny 2 came to Steam. At its peak, the game had 292,000 players – even in February 2022, with the new expansion The Witch Queen, the online shooter was again brushing against this top player count on Steam. But now in November 2022, there are only about 60,000 players online on average, the lowest ever. What is going on?
How have player numbers on Steam developed? When Destiny 2 came to Steam, the heyday was actually long over: The game was released on Steam in October 2019, after Bungie had separated from Activision Blizzard and their launcher Battle.net.
The immense hype around Destiny 2 was already two years old:
- Destiny 2 launched hot in September 2017.
- Back then, it was still riding the wave of Destiny 1 when the expansion “The Taken King” thrilled so many in 2015.
- But many problems caused the hype around Destiny 2 to quickly fizzle out. The first year of Destiny 2 was seen as a horror year, until it became significantly better with Forsaken in September 2018.
We do not know the player counts from those hype months of 2017. However, in October 2019, Destiny had an average of 165,000 players and 292,000 peak concurrent players. At that time, Bungie had also launched a Free2Play program.
Destiny 2 quickly gains many players on Steam, but loses them again just as fast
The numbers fluctuated significantly in the last 3 years, depending on whether there were fresh contents in the game or not:
Player numbers soar in months when something happens on Steam:
- June 2020: +50%. A live event, the announcement of the next expansion, and Season 11 attracted players.
- November 2020 +97%: “Beyond Light is released”.
- May 2021 +54%: The “Nostalgia Raid” The Vault of Glass returned.
- September 2021 +57%: Destiny 2 celebrated its 4th anniversary with Season 15.
- February 2022 +40%: the Witch Queen came to Destiny 2.
After the hype, within 2 months, two out of three players are gone
However, the longer new content does not appear, the more the player count of Destiny 2 on Steam declines again.
Just before a new surge, there was a deep valley, when Destiny 2 had not received new content for over half a year, and the existing content dragged on like chewing gum: In December 2020 (-33%) and January 2021 (-33%), two-thirds of the players disappeared within months, when the hype around “Beyond Light” started to fade.
We also see the constant ups and downs of Destiny 2 through Google Trends. There is a push approximately every 6 months, before interest falls again:
This is the current situation: However, now the valley is even deeper than in all the years before. As gaming sites report, the player count on Steam fell to 60,854 average players in the first week of November. At its lowest, there were just 29,000 players online. Player counts on Steam have never sunk this low before.
Much competition, grind, and age take their toll on Destiny 2
What is causing this? Several factors come together, as the site Forbes suspects:
- On one hand, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Overwatch 2 have been released and are currently hot.
- On the other hand, Destiny 2 is now quite old, it is in year 5 after release – It seems to be taking its toll that no Destiny 3 was released.
- Moreover, the last expansion, The Witch Queen, is now already 9 months old, and there is still some time before the next expansion in February 2023.
The dip on Steam could therefore become even deeper before it gets better.
The plan of Destiny 2 to focus on seasons and extend the playtime of active players with grinding seems to be slowly tiring players.
Maybe the acquisition of Bungie by Sony will bring a turnaround. Bungie has announced that they will be hiring new positions. Perhaps we will see a resurgence in Destiny 2 with new forces and new content after all.
