Destiny 2's new all-time low player count is different this time around

This isn't a huge surprise, given the age of the game and the dismal prospect of a very long season in the wake of the expansion delay, but once again, Destiny 2 has reached a low level of player peaks, with no indication of when there will be a recovery before the final form itself. But now more than ever, this seems particularly troubling given the state of the game and Bungie itself.

January 2024 was his Average number of players On Steam 39,011 and peak players 58,769. This comes on the heels of story content for the end of the season, a shift to mainly standard play, along with some very difficult quests that you can choose to complete each week for two rewards.

These numbers are now lower than each previous month in Destiny's history minus November 2022, when there were 38,158 average players, and November 2023 when there were 33,486 average players. However, the peak player level has never been lower in a given month throughout the game's existence on Steam.

The problem here is that this is happening at the worst possible time for Bungie. The game already set all-time player count records with the release of Lightfall in February last year, which means this is not the case Purely It's an age thing, but player enthusiasm has waned, as has morale at Bungie in the wake of brutal layoffs and continuing leadership issues with no solution in sight. Now, Destiny 2 will lose its game director, Joe Blackburn, next month.

But financially, we also learned that Bungie missed revenue goals by 45% this year, a situation so dire that leadership said that if Bungie had no If Sony had acquired it, the company might have collapsed. As of now, there's a possibility that Sony could step in and completely run Bungie if things don't improve. As we can see, things are not improving.

We still have a full four months to go before the final form launches in June. I think player numbers will continue to decline, and when that happens, revenues will decline as well. Here, there is no 30th Anniversary Pack for sale in the middle of the extended season, as the delay was too last minute for that. There's something called “Into the Light” coming later, but as something that's supposed to include new players before The Final Shape, I doubt they'll be able to charge for it. And a long season like this means no $10 sales, and Eververse likely won't be completely reset with new items, though they've already shown off a pricey collaboration with Mass Effect that they will do soon.

The hope is that things can escalate over time. Destiny went from an average of 38,000 players and a peak of 60,000 players in November 2022 to an average of 135,000 players and a peak of 316,000 when Lightfall launched four months later. The hope is that the final format will see a similarly massive boom, but I have my doubts, as this year's context looks a lot different than last year.

The final form has to be a success and then players need to stick around for the episodic content to follow, and I'm curious to see if this increases or decreases the player count when it starts. But with four months to go, I feel like it's going to get worse for a long time before it gets better.

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