There are numerous ways to tell if a video game is “on the decline” in players’ minds. Though, to be fair, part of said “decline” depends on the type of game it is. For example, if it’s a game that’s all about a story campaign, it’s not uncommon for gamers to buy the title, play through the campaign once, and then put the title down for a long time. But for games like Destiny 2, they are built upon the idea of gamers playing it for a long time and consistently coming back to it for one reason or another.
Bungie has not been in the best place for a while, and now, Forbes is reporting that on Steam, Destiny 2 is at an all-time low in player count. According to them, the last month saw an average of less than 35,000 players on Steam. For context, earlier in the year, when the last significant expansion came out, the player count average was at an all-time high, with over 315K playing the game. So that’s quite a drop for less than a year.
A key element to note here is that it’s not just how few players participate in the game’s content. They’re not spending money on the title as much as Bungie wants them to. That was a major part of the layoffs that hit Bungie recently and forced them to lay off 8% of their staff and delay not just the game’s final DLC but Bungie’s other title they had been working to launch.
The news about the revenue came from within, as the company’s CEO stated that the title wasn’t keeping the players in like they wanted and that they were making 45% less money than they had wanted for 2024. That’s quite a drop in projections for a game like this.
So why aren’t gamers playing Destiny 2 as much as before? Well, part of it likely is the content itself. When Bungie announced its layoffs and said that the “lack of players” was a key reason for it, the gaming community bit back by stating how Bungie wasn’t making “meaningful” content for the game despite its expansions and that the title wasn’t making it easy for new players to enjoy the journey that had been created so far.
Whether the final piece of DLC will “save the game” and Bungie remains to be seen. But these Steam numbers don’t point to a good outcome.
