Destiny 2 Fans Crash Servers on Game's Final Update Day

Destiny 2 received its final content update today, and the community showed up in a way that Bungie almost certainly did not expect, and its servers definitely could not handle. As of this writing, the game has peaked at 167,867 concurrent players on Steam, making it the number one bestselling game on the platform globally and in the U.S. 

Ahead of today's update, fans had been coordinating a mass login campaign with two explicit goals. First, the playerbase wanted to beat Marathon's all-time Steam peak of 77,358 players, and second, to crash Destiny 2's servers. It is an attempt to send a message to Bungie and Sony that the franchise still has an audience worth investing in. 

Destiny 2’s Final Update is Here

Last month, Bungie announced it would be ending support for Destiny 2 in June, with no new expansions or updates beyond June 9’s final drop. The decision caught much of the playerbase off guard. Many had assumed the game had at least another expansion cycle ahead of it. Instead, Bungie has chosen to redirect its resources toward Marathon, its extraction shooter that launched earlier this year and has struggled to hold a meaningful playerbase. 

The frustration is compounded by the absence of any alternative. Destiny 3 is not in active development, and given Bungie's current financial position and Sony's losses on Marathon, the economics of funding a new Destiny game from scratch are not favorable. 

Fans also made their feelings known at Summer Game Fest last week, flooding livestream chats with demands for Destiny 3, a protest that was hard to miss during what was supposed to be a celebration of upcoming games.

167,867 players logging into a game on its final day, a game receiving no new content and with no future announced, is one of the more unusual expressions of fan loyalty the industry has seen in recent memory. These are players who showed up to send a message to not let one of the longest-running gaming franchises die. 

Whether Bungie or Sony reads that number as an argument for the franchise's future or simply as nostalgia with nowhere to go is the question that matters. The players have made their voices heard. Whether Destiny lives on is now in Sony and Bungie’s hands.