Yesterday, Destiny 2 released its final content update with the Monument of Triumph celebration patch. With the update came a surge of players, giving Destiny 2 the highest player count it had seen in two years when we saw The Final Shape expansion hit in June 2024.
Although the numbers are just a little over half what the all-time peak for Destiny 2 was, which was 316k back in February 2023, the 167k players who were all online at the same time for yesterday's update is a massive, almost certainly nostalgia-driven success for Bungie.
It's a shame that Destiny 2 is done.
Destiny 2 has been having a rough couple of years, and it's honestly quite deserved. The content releases for Destiny 2 have, in my humble opinion, been underwhelming and their desire to remove content from the game that was paid for because of the install size of the game being too large and citing performance concerns, is quite frankly, bullshit. They thankfully haven't vaulted an entire expansion worth of content in some time, but there is Destiny 2 content that will never be playable again and that's sad. Destiny 2's Beyond Light expansion deserved the criticism it received for such a mistake.
One could argue that games like World of Warcraft have removed content as well that players have paid for, and you'd be correct in that the main game has revamped zones in the past, removing old quests and completely changing the vibe of the area. I only bring this up because I've seen people try and make the comparison during discourse and say that they get a pass so Bungie should too. I just want to set the record straight here: these are not the same thing. WoW made changes to content which it has done for the entirety of the game, changes are good, Destiny straight up hit the delete key and forever emptied the Recycle Bin.
It would be one thing to change how Mars, Titan, or Io appeared in the game, or to potentially even have a cataclysmic event in the universe which blew one of them up, but to just delete them? Not cool, Bungie, and yes we're still salty about it.
Which all gets even more hilarious when you consider that Sony bought Bungie for an insane $3.6 Billion back in 2022, and Sony came out with a statement last year during the Q2 financial call, talking about the under performance of the game.
Quote From Lin Tao, the CFO and Corporate Executive Officer at Sony Regarding Destiny 2, partially due to the changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie. While we will continue to make improvements, we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being, and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie.
And Then There's Marathon
Marathon on the other hand, Bungie's most recently launched game, has only peaked at 88k players when the game launched and has only gone downhill from there. Last month we saw Bungie planning layoffs in a report from Bloomberg via Jason Schreier, which is to be expected with Marathon not doing great and no plans for Destiny 3.
With that said, Bungie has stated that they have created a strong core community around the extraction shooter and that they are currently on a "multi-season journey" to grow the game and to make it feel less grindy and more rewarding. They have big plans for the future of the game and it would be great to see Bungie come out on top again after several lackluster years because they have created some amazing gaming experiences.
Luckily for those who are still playing, Bungie has no desire to shut the servers down, Destiny 2 will remain active for the forseeable future much like the original Destiny is still online to this day, which they get massive credit for because more companies should keep servers online when they are done with their live service games.
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