Destiny 2’s new release structure fails to capture fans as player counts plummet act-on-act

Bungie has officially released Destiny 2 Revenant Act 3, the final section of its ongoing story epilogue. Coming after The Final Shape wrapped up the series’ original arc, the new story content has resulted in the lowest player counts for the series yet.

With the release of Act 3, there was an overall expectation that Destiny 2 could claw back some of its departed players. However, that’s not the case, as the launch of Act 3 has resulted in the lowest concurrent player count of any new content drop in franchise history.

Destiny 2 Revenant fails to bring back players

Looking at the game’s Steam Charts profile, it’s easy to see a worrying trend for the future of Destiny 2. As with any live-service game, Destiny 2 benefits from a surge in players whenever there’s a new content drop, and that’s the same with the ongoing Revenant release structure.

However, with each Act’s release, Destiny 2 has seen drastically lower returning player counts act-on-act. With the release of The Final Shape in June 2024, the looter shooter saw it’s highest concurrent player count in over a year, rising from a historic low of 38,000 players in November to a staggering 314,000.

The release of Revenant Act 1 saw a large number of players returning to the game, albeit down substantially from The Final Shape to just 78,000 concurrents on Steam. On November 19^th, the release date for Act 2, the game’s player count spiked again to just 53,000 players.

Revenant Act 3 follows the same downward trend, this time boasting only 36,000 concurrent players on release. While tens of thousands of players is still nothing to balk at, it is still lower than the game’s historic low before the release of The Final Shape.

The data proves that, outside of a very core fanbase, the majority of Destiny 2 players are not keen on returning after the release of The Final Shape. With Destiny 3 not in the works, it’s up to the game’s two expansions later this year to see if there’s any juice left in the tank. Unfortunately, it seems the juice is loose.