After the high Destiny 2 player numbers of the recently praised DLC “The Witch Queen,” the Guardians wondered: “How well did it go at the start of the Lightfall DLC in 2023?“ MeinMMO tracked the player numbers during the release and shows it to you.
By the end of Year 5, the mood in the Destiny 2 community was rather mediocre. After weak seasons, especially the “Season of the Plunderers,” and problems in the game, the regular players of the loot shooter found it hard to get into DLC mood for Lightfall.
And this, even though Bungie drummed up the hype with a fresh start, a brand-new location, and the new, mobile subclass “Strand”. Some even announced they would cancel their pre-order of Lightfall because it had overwhelmed them with the grind of Destiny 2.
Yet when the witness arrived live in the solar system on February 28, 2023, at 6:00 PM, the Guardians apparently returned to their light-giver, the Traveler. MeinMMO shows you the Steam numbers at the Lightfall launch.
DLC launch brings Destiny 2 new Steam record
No one expected this: The launch of Destiny 2: Lightfall was, after all these signs and criticisms from the community, seemingly under a bad star. Players expected that Lightfall would be a flop in pre-sales. Also, because Bungie did not announce a million threshold for pre-orders this year, as it did for Witch Queen.
All the more surprising was that the developer Bungie ended up with the Lightfall DLC on Steam, despite everything, experiencing a player influx like never before on launch night.
In 2023, so many simultaneous Guardians appeared on Steam in the expansion that Bungie was able to break its own player record.
- 290,112 honored Savathun simultaneously at the launch of the Witch Queen DLC in 2022.
- 292,513 checked in 2019 when Destiny 2 migrated from Battle.net to Steam. This Destiny record has now been broken by Lightfall 2023.
- 316,000 players were logged in simultaneously on the evening of February 28 for the launch of Lightfall.
However, these numbers only apply to players on Steam and also include the curious NewLight players who were playing free-to-play and thus for free in Destiny 2 last night, so likely did not purchase Lightfall but only checked it out. However, one can assume that the storm and player numbers were similarly high on PS4, PS5, and Xbox last night.
Another piece of information is that player numbers on Steam, although fluctuating depending on the quality of the current content offering, have remained quite stable for years. This has led to Destiny 2 hardly leaving the top games ranking in the Steam charts.
Last night, the loot shooter ranked 6th among the top games – thus considered a perennial favorite. Destiny 2 is almost tied with the current survival hit Sons of the Forest
Can Destiny 2 maintain this level? Currently, the numbers have readjusted. At the time of this MeinMMO article, 186,346 simultaneous players were playing the new Lightfall content.
However, these numbers are expected to decrease over the coming weeks and then stabilize at the Destiny all-time standard between 90,000 and 60,000 players at peak.
Excluding the statistics for the other platforms, one cannot assess the relative popularity of the Destiny 2 expansions. But the statistics show that the Lightfall hype was great, albeit unexpected.
Whether Bungie can not only lure its players into the game but also convince them of the long-term offering of its loot shooter remains to be seen.
Are you excited about this unexpected success of Destiny 2 and now have the appropriate answer to questions like “Does anyone still play this?” Or do you say that the level won’t be able to hold with Lightfall? Please write your response in the comments.
In Destiny 2: Lightfall, players are currently being killed by completely new enemies:
