Destiny 2 Renegades
Bungie
Destiny 2 is about to launch its upcoming Star Wars-licensed Renegades expansion in under two weeks on December 2. Promotion has begun to spin up with new trailers and blog posts, but we appear to be heading toward an unfortunate, inevitable reality.
I believe there is little chance that this new expansion tops the already-low concurrent player numbers of Destiny 2’s first post-Light and Darkness saga expansion, The Edge of Fate, and those numbers were already a third of the previous one, The Final Shape.
The problem here is that the quality of the expansion effectively does not matter in the current state of Destiny 2 in terms of changing this reality. I recently visited Bungie to play Renegades, and I will say absolutely nothing about whether it’s good or bad here (not until embargo, at least), but the point is that the circumstances at present are not going to allow for a true “hit” here either way. I believe this would happen with or without Star Wars branding, which some view as a positive and others a negative.
We are about to see the problem with this new era of Destiny 2, where content has been slimmed down to the point where there are now six month gaps of little to no new content between smaller expansion releases. After day one of The Edge of Fate, there was no new story content to log in for. There have been perilously few days that have felt necessary to log in for outside of that. A raid launch, an exotic mission, and its midseason update, Ash and Iron, which promptly made many lingering players log out. Sprinkle in a few holiday events and that’s really it.
The math is not in Bungie’s favor here. Using the numbers we have available through Steam (there are no indications the console trendlines are any different), we have:
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- The month before The Final Shape launch, when the game was still producing seasons, the game peaked at 116,000 players. The expansion launched with 314,000.
- The month before The Edge of Fate launch, when the game was producing episodes, the game peaked at 38,000 players. The expansion launched with 108,000.
- Now, the month before Renegades launch, when the game is no longer producing episodes or seasons, the game is peaking around 23,000 players. With expansions doing a little less than triple that previous month, we’re talking about a 65,000-ish peak. If we’re being generous with potentially positive reviews or an extra boost from Star Wars, that could make it maybe 80,000, if I had to guess. I’d love to be wrong, but I would be surprised.
Destiny 2 Renegades
Bungie
Players keep citing stats like the fact that Trials of Osiris at times has 3 total three-player teams matchmaking at any given time. Or the fact that Destiny 2 has dropped out of the top 100 on Steam this close to an expansion launch. Taken together, the picture is dim.
The problem Destiny 2 faces now is that with this current system, it’s difficult to imagine how mild improvements to the six month gap or a specific, small expansion can turn this around. I don’t know if every expansion will decline from here, but this is the path we’re on, and it’s a tough one.
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