Destiny 2 is going through a rough patch for a game that Bungie expected to “evolve indefinitely.” Both player and developer morale are at rock bottom, the studio is in chaos, and the project is clearly receiving less support than before. Eurogamer portal speakwhy these could be the final weeks before destiny 2's final death.
Over the weekend, fans were once again talking about the sorry state of Destiny 2 – but now much more enthusiastically, as this time players were able to take a closer look at the stats than ever before. Previously, SteamDB data was used to collect information but was limited to one platform. A new tool, popular.report, appears in third-party rich-destiny apps, showing much more detailed statistics.
According to rich-destiny, Destiny 2 online has dropped to an all-time low. Even lower than in the Curse of Osiris expansion, where players had to practically rebel against Bungie in response to the short story, monotonous patrol locations, weak endgame, and poor sandbox work. Eight years later, Destiny 2 is back at the same point, with players again complaining about the same things, from a mediocre story to frustrating meta progression.
When it released Curse of Osiris, Bungie thought the game's days were numbered. About two years ago, then-Destiny 2 director Justin Trueman gave a talk at GDC to look at the status of the project and how the studio was trying to overcome the challenges of live services. According to Trueman, the developers were horrified. Weekly online play has dropped to such low levels that if the influx continues for another month, the user base could disappear entirely. In February 2018, Bungie was just weeks away from completely shutting down Destiny 2.
Seven years have passed, and the studio team is shrinking. Massive layoffs and shifting resources to the always-delayed Marathon meant that Destiny 2 began to receive less support. Many popular content producers are stopping streaming and producing gaming videos. The flow of users leaving continues. If the studio was “horrified” by the reaction to Curse of Osiris, then today the morale of the developers has probably dropped to zero.
It is noteworthy that the opinion about the imminent death of Destiny 2 cannot be called unpopular – it is regularly heard among the community of loyal fans of the game. Of course, Destiny fans are always complaining about something, but now, for the first time in 10 years, things look really sad.
What does the future hold for the project? Perhaps upcoming supplements will be able to fix some of the bugs – Bungie has assured players that they intend to reconsider the most unpopular recent decisions. Will this be enough to regain the attention of enough users? Not the truth. With the huge success of Battlefield 6 and the impending launch of a new Call of Duty, developers will face more competition than usual. Bungie will have to really try to stop the loss of players.
Will the combination of Star Wars help improve the situation? Destiny 2 has major problems that can't be fixed with a simple update. The game's inception for new users is terrible, a key part of the plot is missing and considered old content, and there are so many menus in the game that navigating through them feels like office work.
