“Destiny 2” just had its highest monthly player count since its F2P launch

What’s the opposite of a dead game? A live one, and Destiny 2 continues to be one of the only PvE-centric live games that has not just survived over time, but thrived. And if you need any evidence of that, just look at the latest post-Lightfall player numbers.

This was highlighted by u/Merzats on reddit, as they followed up with the previous information we knew that Lightfall had brought the highest peak playercount for Destiny 2 on Steam…ever, with 316,000 players at Lightfall launch besting all previous expansions.

Now, we have some similarly impressive, longer-term figures. With March having come and gone, we can now see that the game’s average players in March at 135,102 are higher than at any point in the game’s history except for 165,307 during the launch of Shadowkeep. Importantly, that’s not just the first moment the game came to Steam in the first place, but it was also the launch of the New Light free-to-play experience, back when the game still had loads of free content (Red War, both expansions, its first three seasons) for players to consume. So I’m not surprised it didn’t quite beat that out.

Some players are befuddled as to why the game has done so well this past month when Lightfall was not terribly well received. A few thoughts on that.

First, while the initial narrative surrounding Lightfall was a lot of bad buzz, it’s very clear that was mainly due to one thing, the story. It’s what everyone’s first impression of the expansion was, as it’s the initial thing you experience, and the mysteries of the Veil and the Radial Mast and Nimbus’ “cringe” dialogue made a poor impression.

But almost everything else? It was actually quite good. After some confusion about Strand given its forced entry into the campaign, once you could make full builds, its easily one of the best subclasses Destiny has ever given us across two games. I’d argue Neomuna itself turned out to be a pretty neat zone when fully explored. And Season of Defiance content has been solid as well, offering substantial new Battlegrounds and a controversial storyline. Post-launch content here seems more robust than say, Witch Queen or Beyond Light before it.

Then there’s the general state of the game which I mean, is dramatically improved since the Shadowkeep era in just about every way. This season introduced loadouts and much easier buildcrafting. The 3.0 subclass updates plus Strand and Stasis means that gameplay itself is probably more fun to play than its ever been (minus some of the more extreme difficulty changes which have been partially reverted from their debut in Lightfall). Weapon crafting now exists, there are titles to hunt and gild, transmog to acquire, loads of loot to farm across loads of dungeons and raids. There’s simply a lot more to do and it keeps players engaged for longer.

I know that Destiny gets a lot of crap for being the same thing over and over with its seasonal/expansion model, but the truth is, outside of a storyline or season that misses here or there, the game really has become more refined and streamlined over time, producing better content at a greater volume, while simultaneously bolstering its core features. Yes, there’s always something to complain about (give us Gambit and Crucible maps!), but if you step back for the 10,000 foot view of Destiny 2 right now, I think you could argue it’s the best it’s ever been, and the playercount reflects that.

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