Destiny 2 is one of Steam’s highest earning games despite massively missing projections

Destiny 2 is one of Steam’s top-earning games, despite Bungie having to let go of many of its staff and missing their sales projections massively. 

Destiny 2 and by extension, Bungie have had a rough year. While Lightfall was played by many, the expansion’s campaign left most wanting, and the game has been dropping in player count since.

That’s only in-game too. In October, Bungie announced major layoffs, with Bungie letting go of 8% of its staff. This supposedly was due to the company fumbling its projections, and as Bloomberg reported, missing them by a staggering 45%. Making this worse, The Final Shape supposedly is receiving lackluster pre-order numbers. 

The game soared to record high player counts when Lightfall launched in February but things have been dropping off harshly since. A quick trip to SteamCharts shows how fewer players have been logging onto Destiny for Seasonal releases, and the game had its lowest player count since it launched on Steam in November.

However, showing how unrealistic those projections may have been, we now know that Destiny 2 is one of Steam’s highest-earning games of 2023. 

Destiny 2 is one of Steam’s top earners this year

Steam has now started its Best of 2023 promotion. As part of that, Valve lists their highest-earning games from the year, broken up by metal ranks. Destiny 2 is in the top tier of platinum, joining games like Dota 2, CS2, Hogwarts Legacy, and Apex Legends. 

Bungie

It’s a stark reminder of just how high Bungie’s projections were which have also led to lay-offs. It is one of the highest-grossing games of 2023 period, and the game still failed to perform to its projections by a wide margin. This is only a glimpse of the situation, as Steam hasn’t released hard numbers on sales, and it also doesn’t account for all the other platforms and storefronts Destiny sells on. 

These numbers also will come from Lightfall purchases, which we know broke the concurrent player records for the game. It’s just a shame it still finds itself in this situation despite that. Here’s hoping that the developers still working on The Final Shape can deliver a fantastic concluding chapter for the franchise, and set up Bungie for more stable success in the future.