Destiny 2‘s player count continues to outdo extraction shooter Marathon by a considerable margin. Bungie released Destiny 2 in 2017 to strong reviews and supported it aggressively for years. Bungie released substantial new Destiny 2 expansions on a regular basis, adding a ton of new content to the game to keep fans engaged for the long-run. Unfortunately, recent years have seen the Destiny 2 player count dwindle, despite Bungie’s best efforts to keep fans interested in the live-service game.
Earlier this year, the shock announcement was made that Destiny 2 updates would be ending, with no Destiny 3 announcement in sight. Instead of releasing new content for Destiny 2, Bungie is focusing its efforts on extraction shooter Marathon, which has struggled to build a sizable community. Marathon peaked at a little over 88,000 active players on Steam, a far cry from Destiny 2‘s height of over 316,000 concurrent players.
Destiny 2 Player Count vs. Marathon
Bungie has more Marathon updates and expansions planned for the months ahead in hopes that the new content will turn things around for the struggling extraction shooter, even though it’s being significantly outperformed by Destiny 2. At the time of this writing, Destiny 2 has 34,735 active players on Steam versus just 3,671 active players for Marathon. This means that Destiny 2 has nearly 10x the number of players that Marathon does, which doesn’t bode well for the newer release. The huge gap in player counts may leave some fans questioning why Destiny 2 was abandoned but Marathon is going to continue getting support for the foreseeable future.
Of course, it should be noted that Destiny 2 is free-to-play while Marathon is a premium release, and these player count numbers only take into account the Steam versions of the games. Destiny 2 and Marathon are also available on other platforms, with Destiny 2 playable on PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S and Marathon playable on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. We don’t have specific sales numbers for Marathon, but it’s estimated that the game sold worse on PS5 and Xbox than it did on PC, which doesn’t exactly paint a pretty picture of how the game’s player counts are doing elsewhere.
Marathon certainly has its fans, but it does seem like there’s simply more interest in the Destiny universe. Now, that’s not exactly a fair comparison. Bungie has been building its Destiny community since the first game released in 2014 and while Marathon is based on an existing IP, it being an extraction shooter, and the fact that it’s been so long since the last game came out, it might as well be a brand-new franchise. It’s entirely possible Bungie will successfully build Marathon‘s community up and the game will reach new heights, but the trend isn’t exactly an encouraging one.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Bungie moving forward. PlayStation spent $3.6 billion buying Bungie, and it doesn’t seem to be working out. Perhaps a pivot to Destiny 3 or some innovative new idea will help turn things around, but that remains to be seen. For now, fans of the company can continue enjoying games like Destiny 2, Marathon, and older titles from the studio.
- Released
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August 28, 2017
- ESRB
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T For TEEN for Blood, Language, and Violence