Destiny 2 has the lowest number of players on Steam ever – Lowest player count in 3 years

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Destiny 2 came to Steam in October 2019. In the meantime, the game had 292,000 players at its peak – even in February 2022, with the new expansion The Witch Queen, the online shooter scratched this top number of players on Steam again. But now in November 2022 there are only 60,000 players online on average, fewer than ever before. What’s going on there?

How has the number of players developed on Steam? When Destiny 2 came on Steam, the high phase was actually long over: The game was released on Steam in October 2019, when Bungie separated from Activision Blizzard and its launcher Battle.net.

The big hype of Destiny 2 was long gone:

  • Destiny 2 got off to a hot start in September 2017.
  • Back then, it was still riding the Destiny 1 wave when the Taken King expansion wowed so many in 2015.
  • But many problems let the hype surrounding Destiny 2 quickly die down. The 1st year of Destiny 2 from 2017 to 2018 was considered by many to be a horror year until it got significantly better with Forsaken in September 2018.

    • We don’t know the numbers from those hype months of 2017. However, as of October 2019, Destiny had an average of 165,000 players and a peak of 292,000 concurrent players. At that time Bungie had also started a Free2Play program.

    Destiny 2 is rapidly gaining and losing players on Steam

    The numbers have fluctuated wildly over the last 3 years, depending on whether fresh content was in play or not:

    This is how the number of players increases rapidly in months in which something happens on Steam:

    Destiny 2 reveals launch trailer for new Witch Queen expansion

    After the hype, two out of three players are gone in two months

    But the longer no new content appeared, the more the number of Destiny 2 players on Steam fell again.

    Always right before a new high, there was a deep valley when Destiny 2 hadn’t received any new content for more than half a year and the existing content was like chewing gum: in December 2020 alone (-33%) and January 2021 (-33%) two-thirds of the players had disappeared within months when the hype about “Beyond the Light” died down again.

    We can also see the constant ups and downs in Destiny 2 via Google’s “trend meter”. There is a boost about every 6 months before interest falls again:

    This is the situation now: But now the valley is even deeper than in all the years before. As reported by gaming sites, the number of players on Steam has dropped to 60,854 average players in the first week of November. At its peak there were just 29,000 players online. The game has never been this deep.

    A lot of competition, grind and age are affecting Destiny 2

    Why is that? Several factors come together, as the Forbes site suspects:

  • For one thing, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Overwatch 2 have come out and are hot right now
  • On the other hand, Destiny 2 is already getting on in years, it’s in year 5 after release – it’s obviously already taking revenge that Destiny 3 didn’t appear
  • Additionally, it’s been 9 months since the last expansion, The Hedenkönigin, and there’s still some time to go before the next expansion in February 2023

    • So the hole on Steam could get even deeper before it gets any better.

    Destiny 2 players despair of the grind – “It’s the first game that doesn’t respect my time.”

    Destiny 2’s plan to rely on Seasons and use Grind to extend the playing time of active players seems to be slowly tiring the players.

    Maybe Sony’s purchase of Bunge will turn things around, Bungie had announced that it would also fill new positions. Maybe we’ll experience an upswing with new content after all.

    Destiny 2: Sony buys Bungie for 3.2 billion euros

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