The Edge Of Fate’ Will Launch With, Per Math

Destiny 2 is entering a much different new era in a month, one which will launch the next few years of the game. It’s switching from an annual expansion and four seasons to two smaller expansions and four “major updates” that are not seasons, and the entire project is called “Frontiers.” Its first expansion is The Edge of Fate, which will be out on July 15, just under a month from now.

One open question is just how many players Edge of Fate will launch with, namely, who will have stuck around since the launch of Destiny 2’s The Final Shape a year ago, given the context of how the game will work now.

I think we can use math to at least get a pretty good estimate of this, given the difference between the pre-expansion lows of the playerbase and then what they spiked to at actual launch. We will, of course, have to use Steam for this, as we don’t have data elsewhere. We only have from Beyond Light forward for Steam, so no Forsaken or Shadowkeep.

Pre-Beyond Light Month (Oct 2020) – 94,000 concurrents

Beyond Light (Nov 2020) – 242,000 concurrents

Increase – 2.57x

Pre-Witch Queen Month (Jan 2022) – 78,000 concurrents

Witch Queen (Feb 2022) – 290,000 concurrents

Increase – 3.71x

Pre-Lightfall Month (Jan 2023) – 96,000 concurrents

Lightfall (Feb 2023) – 316,000 concurrents

Increase – 3.29x

Pre-Final Shape Month (May 2024) – 116,000 concurrents

The Final Shape (June 2024) – 314,000 concurrents

Increase – 2.7x increase

So, what I’ll do here is average the increases together, which would be a 3.01x increase

Then, we take the current playercount figures for this month, the month before Edge of Fate release: 38,000

3.01 x 38,000 = a potential 114,000 peak. That would be below half of Beyond Light and Witch Queen and close to a third of Lightfall and Final Shape. I also think you might be able to say that this could be an over-estimate if the idea is that in the post-Light and Darkness era, a brand new, lower-profile, smaller-scale expansion may prove less attractive.

I’m not trying to dunk on the game here, but I do think we have to be realistic about the new normal for Destiny 2 going forward. I’ve avoided reporting on the “record lows” the game has hit almost every month since The Final Shape, but now reality is approaching as we try to see what level of surge we’re getting for these smaller expansions. Then, of course, we’d have to see how the second expansion did six months later, the Star Wars-themed Renegades.

The way this works out on the revenue side is if the cost of making less content with fewer employees works with the new lower, average playercount in a way that doesn’t put the game deeply in the red. This is not a short-term experiment, this is the plan for a few more years at least with no Destiny 3 on the horizon. It will have to work at least to some degree, as at this point, I don’t think it’s a safe bet that Bungie can rely on the upcoming Marathon to be the huge boost the studio needs (we’ve talked that to death at this point).

Maybe Edge of Fate will prove surprising, but it’s a smaller expansion, offering less content, outside the long-term Light and Darkness saga. Expectations will have to be adjusted accordingly.

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