Destiny hits lowest Steam player count since launch

After multiple rounds of layoffs, Bungie had to make some major changes to how it handles expansion and seasonal content in Destiny 2. Moving forward, we get two ‘mid-size' expansions per year, with two ‘seasons' in-between. Looking at the game's Steam numbers, it is becoming increasingly clear that this new content roadmap is simply not working. 

This week, Destiny 2 hit its lowest daily concurrent player count since the game first released on Steam, with just over 16,000 players logging in worldwide. This is a rather large drop-off from the peak concurrent player count of over 108,000 players when the latest expansion, The Edge of Fate, launched in June.

Compared to the release of The Final Shape, the concurrent player count is down by over 60%. The Final Shape brought in over 300,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch. The Final Shape was the grand finale to Destiny's 10-year story arc, so a lot of players jumped back in to see it through to the end. A third of those players stuck around for The Edge of Fate, but now, they are quickly leaving in droves too.

Bungie is beginning to counter this player drop-off with the confirmation that there will no longer be a ‘power reset' when the Renegades expansion launches in December. However, more will need to be done and even if the issue of ‘grind' is resolved, Bungie will still be lacking seasonal story content, leaving the world of Destiny frozen in time between the expansions.

KitGuru Says: Destiny 2 has clearly hit a wall. New player onboarding is still atrocious, gearing up for and accessing high-level content like Raids is still a mess and even the game's most dedicated content creators are starting to quit. At this time, it seems like the wisest move would be to give Destiny a break, before returning with Destiny 3, a new game that cuts off all the tech debt from the previous entries and starts things fresh. 

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