Destiny 2 Stats: Player Population Reaches an All-Time Low

 Considered one of the most successful live service games ever created, Destiny 2 has had a spot among the Top 15 most-played games on Steam for years. But are the golden days of Bungie’s looter shooter over? 

As the studio lays off close to 10% of its employees and the game misses revenue projections by 45%,  the sentiment around this game has drastically changed. And now that the game has reached several all-time low player counts on Steam, the Destiny community is seriously wondering if the game has a future post-The Final Shape. But what do the actual numbers say? Is Destiny 2 in such a bad shape?

I’m an optimist by nature but it is hard to feel good about the future of Destiny 2 right now

💢 Massive layoffs (including key D2 talent)
💢 The Final Shape & Marathon delayed
💢 2023’s was their worst state of the game
💢 Tone-deaf statement from Bungie’s CEO
💢 Lies:

And to… pic.twitter.com/pO3lJ6w2nP

— BlueberriesGG (@blueberriesGG) October 31, 2023

Destiny 2 Player count per Season

X (formerly Twitter) is full of trending posts claiming that Season of the Witch was the worst Season in the history of Destiny 2 in terms of Player counts on Steam. And as can be seen above, it is factually accurate. Below are the average Player counts on Steam per Season. For the sake of clarity, Bungie’s 30th Anniversary Pack has been accounted as a Season (in spite of officially not being a Season) due to its timing and length, both similar to a standard Destiny 2 Season.

With 66,205 Players on Average, Season 22 had fewer players than Season of the Chosen’s 69,260 Players on average (-8.8%). Even compared with Season of Plunder, which had notoriously low player numbers, Season of the Witch had 27.3% fewer players on average. As of Week 13 (out of 14 in total), Season of the Witch is the new all-time low in terms of player counts on PC.

About our Methodology: Why Steam?

While Destiny 2 is a multiplatform game available on PC, Xbox, and Playstation, we unfortunately only have access to data for PC (via Steam and steamdb.info). For this reason, we can only use Player counts for PC. However, from the little information we can gather from other third-party trackers, we can safely assume that all platforms follow the same trends. When Player Counts go down on PC, they go down on consoles too.  

For the creation of these tables and charts, we simply extracted Steam Player counts per day and assigned specific Seasons and Week # based on dates. This consolidated data is then used to create several pivot tables and charts. 

Destiny 2 Monthly Players: 

Taking a more granular approach and looking into Player counts per month, October and November 2023 are set to be some of the worst months in terms of Player population in the history of Destiny 2 on Steam (more on that in a moment). Do note that at the time of this writing, November is not over yet (our data stops on November 22, 2023, included).

Destiny 2 Player Retention

Both average numbers per Season and Month confirm that Destiny 2 is going through a very difficult patch. In fact, the game has reached all-time lows on both Seasonal and Monthly fronts. But many have quickly pointed out that it’s normal that Seasons get lower player counts as we get closer to the next DLC. This has always been the case, especially for the third season of the “Year”. The player base is fatiguing and while the fourth season benefits from the hype of the upcoming DLC, the third Season suffers the most.

This was the case for Season of Plunder. But how does it compare with Season of the Witch? 

With a worse player retention than Plunder, Season of the Witch is the worst Destiny 2 season in terms of player counts. But is it really?

But are these truly Destiny 2’s all-time lows?

The narrative around these numbers has made for several trending posts on Social media. Loom and gloom posts always do better. But Warmind.io, creator of the essential Charlemagne Discord bot and prominent member of the Destiny 2 community, pointed out that Steam doesn’t tell the entire history.

For all the people saying this is the lowest player count in D2 history, it is far from it. Steamcharts doesn’t tell the whole story, b/c things were far, far worse near the end of D2 year 1.

Destiny 2 will survive and thrive. Enjoy the game and stop listening to the doomers. pic.twitter.com/j4OwsS484h

— Charlemagne, Warmind (@Charlemagne_Bot) November 21, 2023

Indeed, Destiny 2 became available on Steam with the release of Shadowkeep and the start of “Year 3” of Destiny 2. “Year 2”, Forsaken is seen by many as the best year in Destiny 2, but what about “Year 1”? It’s no secret that Destiny 2 was dissapointing at launch and the subsequent Curse of Osiris and Warmind only made things worse. That’s the only other time that the community genuinely wondered if Destiny 2 would survive. 

According to Warmind, who has access to thousands of data points coming straight from Bungie’s servers, Year 1 numbers for Destiny 2 way much lower than today’s. And if Destiny 2 managed to survive and thrive back then, why can’t it do it again today?