A long summer break with dwindling player numbers: That’s what Destiny 2 is currently dealing with until the new DLC “The Final Shape” is released. It’s good that Bungie still had an ace up its sleeve and brought many players back to the servers with the free “Into the Light” event.
What did Destiny 2’s servers look like? Generally speaking, relatively empty. Who doesn’t know the full towers of Destiny 2, where minute-long loading screens ensured that you spawned on the tower with up to 20 other Guardians? Well, those days are over. If you load into the tower, you will find an empty social space full of NPCs and the waiting times in matchmaking are longer than usual.
If you look at the last few weeks and months in which Guardians logged in via Steam, you could already see that many players were hanging around in other games and didn’t want to do the same activities from Season 23.
However, with the release of “Into the Light,” the number of players changed rapidly and the loot shooter enjoyed a larger audience of Guardians.
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120,000 players on Steam after months of drought
Why was there an increase in players? Bungie announced a postponement of “The Final Shape”. The DLC was first scheduled to release in February 2024, but was pushed back to June of the same year. The shift was spontaneous and Bungie had to develop new content so that players had a reason to log in even during the major content drought.
This is why the free “Into the Light” update was created. The update should bring a horde mode, 12 iconic weapons, two exotic missions from the past, a raid mode and three new PvP maps. A large package that was able to attract many guardians, because when the update was released, the number of players on Steam shot up to a peak of up to 120,000 players.
What do player numbers look like on Steam now? If you compare the player numbers from the last few months on steamcharts.com, you can see in the graphic how the player numbers were between 30,000 and 40,000 players on average. However, since the update was released, the number of players briefly shot up to 123,508.
Even after that, depending on the playing times, there are numbers of 60,000 to 90,000 players at peak. So you might think that Bungie brought its players back for a brief moment. It remains to be seen whether the gatekeeping of the content can keep players on the servers longer or whether they will gradually leave the ship for other titles.
Did Bungie do a good job with “Into the Light” or are you not happy with the free update? Let us find out in the comments!
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