‘Destiny 2’ Finally, Inevitably, Hits Its Lowest Players Ever Mark

Things have been trending in a poor direction for several months since The Final Shape’s release, Destiny 2’s ten year cap-off expansion, and as I previously forecast, it did indeed lead to a mass drop-off of players thereafter, even as new content continued to be made.

That content, a prolonged “Episode” that operates as an extended season, has now slowly bled players until it has now hit an unfortunate, inevitable milestone, the game’s lowest average playercount in history on Steam. First reported by TheGamePost, the average over the last 30 days is now 31,800 players, which is below the previously all-time low of February 2024, during a down point in the middle of the year before Final Shape launched. In terms of peak players, Destiny 2 is now down to 15-20% of what we saw with The Final Shape’s launch just three months ago. There are few indications that these figures will not sink further in the final month of the season, where there is just one more week of story content and nothing of significance thereafter.

Bungie seems to understand that the playerbase is leaving in droves, and has said it will now start talking about what happens after these episodes a full nine months before it happens. Bungie has announced that for the ten year anniversary of the series it will start detailing what will happen in “Frontiers,” the new content era for Destiny.

The problem is we already know at least some nebulous shape of what Frontiers will be due to insider reporting. Something like a smaller-scale expansion, two episode-like interlude seasons and something like Into the Light. And that’s the year, with simply less content than before and reportedly no Destiny 3 in the works at all, when all anyone ever says is that Destiny 3 would be the only thing to get them re-engaged with the game.

If numbers like these are Destiny 2’s “new normal,” if they don’t sink even further below this, that’s a problem for Bungie. Fewer players mean less Episode and dungeon pass purchases and less spent on microtransactions. Smaller years of content will mean either a price drop from the usual $100 year bundle or fewer people buying it if it stays that high. I don’t want to say things are in a “nosedive” but certainly a flat spin, and it’s hard to see how things can course correct rather than the game settling at a far lower level than it was at previously.

It seems like Bungie almost has to transition to gassing up other projects significantly to make up the difference like 2025’s Marathon, which needs to be at least some level of a hit. Reportedly its MOBA/fighting game project Gummi Bears is good, but it has no release window. There are rumors of a Destiny mobile game that could either print money as that genre often does, or bomb as zero actual Destiny fans seem excited about.

It’s a tough situation, and it’s not going to get easier.

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