Destiny 2
Bungie
The popularity of Destiny 2 in this current era continues to grow, and even as someone who loves the game and covers it avidly, I continue to be surprised with the metrics I’m seeing.
The past week, Destiny 2 has routinely been the #3 most played game on all of Steam, second only to Valve’s own CSGO and DOTA, which unlikely to be unseated by anything.
But this means that Destiny 2 is routinely surging ahead of other popular games like Apex Legends, Team Fortress 2, PUBG and GTA 5. It’s been hanging around the top 10 for a while but, now lately, it’s moved up into the top tier at certain times of day.
I first heard about this on Tuesday, which would make some amount of sense because it was weekly reset, and we often see a surge of players then, which could take it up. It was #3 then, but this…was not a particularly special week of Destiny 2. Nothing big happened at reset, and we are a month into the season now.
Destiny 2
Bungie
Then I looked yesterday and the game was still #3, just a tiny bit above Apex Legends. The game is routinely peaking at over 100,000 players a day, and keep in mind, this is just PC, not console.
I’ve written about Destiny’s recent popularity surge before, and I maintain the same facts are true. Simply put, Destiny 2 has done a great job with its seasonal content this entire year and has been easy to recommend. It’s why we’ve seen each season become more popular than the last in a kind of snowball effect, though this extremely long six month season may be about to put that to the test ahead of the delayed Witch Queen.
The game now also has not just cross save, but cross play, meaning those PC players can now play with their console friends in PvP or PvE content. I believe this is a pretty big factor in the more recently growth of the game, breaking down those walls.
As the season goes on, I’m not sure how long this will continue, but again, the fact that we are a month in and this is still happening is deeply impressive on its own. A lot also depends on the states of these other games, its competition in the list, and obviously a game like Apex will surge when a new season launches.
Still, I never really figured I’d ever see Destiny 2 this high up the list on Steam, here in year four, not even at season launch. Not even at weekly reset. It’s pretty wild, and just another example of how much this game has exploded in popularity as of late. You love to see it.
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