Destiny 2 has lost about 91% of its total player base since the release of its last expansion pack, Edge of Fate. Compared to the previous Final Shape DLC, the stats are even worse for Destiny 2 at 97% of players gone. Bungie’s infamous free-to-play live-service FPS has seen its concurrent player counts drop to historic lows over the past couple of months, showing that even its Star Wars-themed expansion pack couldn’t keep the audiences interested.
Even Destiny 2‘s recent patches get overwhelmingly negative responses from players, and the overall sense is that Bungie is having trouble figuring out where to take the game next. This situation isn’t to blame purely on the latest Edge of Fate expansion pack, however, as the player drop began in earnest following the release of 2024’s The Final Shape, which effectively ended Destiny‘s Light & Dark saga and wrapped up its longest-running narrative with a fairly sensible bow on top. It was to be expected that players would start dropping the game after The Final Shape, but Bungie is unlikely to have expected such a substantial crash.
Destiny 2 Steam Player Count Hits New Lows
Destiny 2’s concurrent player count on Steam hits a new low as Bungie’s looter shooter continues to grapple with declining popularity.
Destiny 2 Has Lost 97% of Players Since the Final Shape DLC, and There’s No Apparent Plan in Place
The information about Destiny 2‘s lost player base comes from Steam Charts, with the statistics assessed by Forbes’ Destiny content creator Paul Tassi. While the 91% drop in active players from Edge of Fate to today is already steep, the higher 97% drop compared to The Final Shape tells a more comprehensive story, as that DLC was effectively pitched as a neat wrap-up for some of Destiny‘s biggest and longest-running mysteries. At its height, Destiny 2 had over 316,000 concurrent players on PC alone, and its current concurrency peaks don’t go over 10,000, which illustrates the issue rather well. Of course, there is still content planned, but the interest might not be there anymore, with the next Destiny 2 Shadow and Order DLC postponed until June.
While only PC player numbers are available, it’s not a huge stretch to imagine that the console player base is experiencing a similarly severe drop. The game’s problems are largely platform-agnostic, with Destiny 2 bouncing between divisive changes with no apparent plan for how to resolve them long term. The next big content release, Shadow and Order, is building on top of Renegade‘s baseline, and while there are some promising features included like weapon enhancing and the return of the boss Pantheon, it’s unlikely to move the needle for Destiny 2.
From the perspective of a long-time player, Destiny 2 is effectively in constant flux. Bungie revises gameplay systems at a steady pace, which hasn’t always worked out in the game’s favor. The fact that Destiny 2 has been intertwined with Star Wars, too, could be taken to diminish the property’s identity as a standalone offering, which some players might not enjoy all that much. The scale of Destiny 2‘s decline is bound to have long-term consequences for the IP as well. Bungie’s attention is now split between Destiny and Marathon, and the latter is a fresh and reasonably well reviewed experience as opposed to all the former’s baggage.
It’s not a total wash for Destiny 2, though. The game has weathered a number of challenging periods before, and it’s entirely possible that Shadow and Order‘s insistence on reviving beloved features like the Pantheon could bring players back in meaningful numbers. There have also been murmurs of Destiny 3 in development at Bungie, which would definitely result in a renewal of interest from long-time fans. The big question is whether Sony will afford Bungie the resources and patience necessary to realize such a lofty goal.
- Released
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August 28, 2017
- ESRB
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T For TEEN for Blood, Language, and Violence
