From Launch To Life Support: Destiny 2 Now At Lowest Player Count In History

Bungie’s Destiny 2 launched in September 2017 with the promise of redemption. After years of struggling to define what the original Destiny was supposed to be, the sequel arrived with cinematic storytelling, refined gunplay, and a clearer vision for the future. The campaign against Dominus Ghaul’s Red Legion was epic, the gameplay loop felt smooth, and the game seemed more accessible to newcomers. 

Within months though, players of the buy-to-play shooter were frustrated by simplified progression, shallow rewards, and lackluster expansions like Curse of Osiris and Warmind. The community backlash pushed Bungie into a cycle of “fix-and-repeat.” Each new update promised to repair the damage left by the last. In 2018, Forsaken became the great redemption story, adding Gambit, the Dreaming City, and one of the most emotional stories in the series with Cayde-6’s death. Then came Bungie’s split from Activision in 2019.

That separation was hailed as liberation. Free from a publisher’s influence, Bungie could finally steer Destiny 2 on its own terms. The New Light initiative that same year made the base game free-to-play and introduced cross-save, expanding accessibility. But independence brought new pressure. Bungie now had to sustain a massive live-service ecosystem alone — and it leaned into that model completely.

From Shadowkeep onward, Destiny 2 became the torchbearer of seasonal live-service content. There were triumphs like The Witch Queen in 2022, but also missteps. The decision to “vault” older expansions and planets, for example, fractured the player base. Bungie said the vault was necessary to manage file size and development scope, but to fans it felt like erasing history. Paid content vanished, replaced by recycled events and an ever-growing store of microtransactions.

By 2024, The Final Shape brought closure to the decade-long Light and Darkness Saga. It was meant to be the end of one era and the start of another: Edge of Fate, the new multi-year storyline that launched in July 2025. That uncertainty became undeniable after its release.

Edge of Fate debuted with just 98,211 players on Steam — less than one-third of The Final Shape’s 314,634 day-one peak. Two months later, the numbers were even worse. Steam Charts data shows that Destiny 2 averaged 18,439 players in the last 30 days, the lowest in franchise history since arriving on PC in 2019. Even January 2025, previously the game’s worst month, averaged slightly higher at 18,542. During non-peak hours, concurrent players have dipped below 8,000.

Also, the Edge of Fate expansion introduced The Portal, a new system meant to improve replayability and ease new players into the universe. Instead, it became one of the most polarizing features yet. Players felt it overcomplicated the core loop without addressing long-standing problems like balance, loot redundancy, and the lack of meaningful innovation. On Steam, the expansion holds an “Overwhelmingly Negative” review score — only 4% positive out of 370 reviews. That discontent has spilled into broader distrust. Bungie recently admitted its “missteps” and promised that an upcoming roadmap will help “rebuild trust.” But players are already burned.

To put this collapse in perspective, Destiny 2’s all-time player peak was 314,634 concurrent players during The Final Shape’s launch in June 2024. Just over a year later, the game’s monthly average has fallen to 18,439 — a nearly 90% drop from its peak. And the irony is that Edge of Fate’s campaign has been praised by many as one of the best in the series.

Bungie has another expansion, Renegades, planned for December 2025 — a Star Wars-themed event that could draw attention back. But with player counts at historic lows and goodwill nearly exhausted, the studio faces its greatest test yet. For Destiny 2 to recover, Bungie will need more than another expansion — it will need to remember why players fell in love with this universe in the first place.