Destiny 2 isn't quite dead yet; in fact, it's more alive than it's been in a while, with player counts having spiked since E3 and the announcements regarding Shadowkeep, as well as the future of the franchise.
According to PCGamesN, the numbers surpassed one million this week and, as of Sunday, the daily population was at 1.01 million, as 963,000 players were in PvE, 472,000 were in Crucible, 319,000 in Gambit, and 139,000 conducting raids.
The game certainly fell way below expectations following the success of Destiny 1 and hosted just around six million active users per month by the end of last year. Developer Bungie has since bought back the publishing rights from Activision and, in recent financial results, the latter revealed a loss of 12 million active users over the previous quarter while claiming around half of that figure is attributed to the Destiny loss.
“The company had 345 million monthly active users in Q1,” COO Collister Johnson said in a conference call, cited by VGC. “Activision monthly active users were 41 million, with around half of the quarterly sequential decline due to the exclusion of Destiny monthly active users.”
The numbers likely account for both Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 players, although many are expected to have moved on to the second installment of the game.
Following the launch of the Forsaken expansion back in September, Destiny Tracker daily user counts noted that there were 1.3 million players in the crucible and 2.6 million in PvE. The website took down the daily population tracker to only show current numbers on the front page but Forsaken's impact could still be monitored via the Wayback Machine.
The new Season of Opulence has certainly handed the game a boost, with the Menagerie mode becoming quite popular among players as well.
The Shadowkeep expansion is also set for launch on September 17 and is said to offer an à la carte function, which allows players to choose and pay for exactly what they want to play.
Bungie has also said that it isn't sure what direction it will take as it relates to the creation of more expansions or a third installment of the game, but it will be depending on player reactions to help them make the choice.