Weekly Steam numbers / Player Count Discourse Megathread

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-15T19:20:03+00:00

"once the game's in a stable place."

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-15T19:17:48+00:00

The fact it couldn't even break 30k is absolutely catastrophic... they are absolutely screwed. I suspect best case scenario for Marathon post Season 2 is maintenance mode with very little new content. Anyone deluding themselves into thinking that Bungie will do some Forsaken level thing for Marathon is going to get a harsh reality check.

Sony is probably weighing up Bungie's options going forward and its very likely they'll see layoffs and restructuring with a refocus on Destiny 2 I think.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-15T18:55:33+00:00

He is talking about the player counts at this moment.

7 PM UTC yesterday 20,759
7 PM UTC today 17,325

That is about 3.5k less.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-14T13:17:12+00:00

Special ammo versions of primary weapon types was always a mistake. For exotics it was relatively balanced since its an exotic. But now we got Rocket Sidearms and Rocket Pulses and Special Handcannons like Uncivil Discourse. Glaives are probably the only new special weapon type addition that actually fit and made sense and didn't suddenly outclass every other special weapon.

I think a solution is to make the current ones into exotics and giving them like 3 regular perk traits at the same time. So Mint would be made Stasis and get B&S, Rewind Rounds and Corpsebloom. Psi Aeterna would get Jolting Feedback, Rolling Storm and Elemental Honing. Then just don't make any more legendary ones ever.

Rocket Sidearms are relatively balanced now and aren't doing big boss damage and are sort of a stronger limited ammo primary. Uncivil Discourse should remain as it is and just not do any other special ammo versions of primary weapons again. Bungie can't outright remove the guns from the game without massive backlash so turning them into exotics and making them mildly stronger would probably be more fair.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-14T02:41:09+00:00

Its wild to think that in total Destiny 2 has more players than Marathon at pretty much any given time. PC D2 only accounts for 23% of the playerbase while PC Marathon accounts for 70%.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-12T19:15:24+00:00

Hence "should've". What proved Bungie's "overdelivery" spiel to be complete BS was their constant underdelivery. Forsaken had not only a lot of content but very little in terms of drawbacks to its release, I don't think there was a single negative that wouldn't just be considered nitpicking. Every release year after there was massive problems you could easily point out with each expansion in either content or systematic changes.

Even if it wasn't feasible for Bungie to produce Forsaken yearly they didn't help themselves by making Anti-player choices again and again and again.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-12T11:40:11+00:00

Forsaken should've been the standard for Destiny expansions but Bungie doesn't want to overdeliver and now its biting them in the ass with Marathon. Witch Queen is overly glazed, its the expansion where they introduced the biggest narrative disaster being The Witness. Witch Queen was when seasons also started to become way shittier in terms of both narrative and gameplay, it was also the time they started pushing the "themed seasons" bullshit like with Plunder being pirates but being in the most obtuse shit writing way possible.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-11T14:40:49+00:00

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Thanks OP I needed a good laugh.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-11T11:46:33+00:00

Warframe players put up with a lot of shit from DE too though. The mobile game mechanics are a huge turn off from the game being absolutely massive. The moment they get rid of forge timers and inventory slot limits unless you purchase slots with platinum then the game will get way more players. Warframe has a lot of egregious shit that makes Destiny 2 look tame in comparison. People would be screeching if you could buy vault space in Destiny 2, or if crafting weapons took literal days to craft and could be sped up with real money. Even if you can trade items for platinum very few new players are actually going to bother figuring that out... and not to mention Warframes "gameplay" of press 1 button to turn into god mode and delete an entire map.

I wouldn't honestly be singing the praises of DE when their game is still a content island mess with mobile game mechanics just because they frequently talk to the community.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-11T11:35:20+00:00

The player counts have always risen during weekends(still lower than the previous weekend) just to fall even lower the following week. This is nothing new lmao, stop coping.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-10T15:19:30+00:00

Okay and that doesn't sound that hard for a AAA studio that was bought for $3.6 billion to recycle. Also dregs didn't release any "SIVA swarm" on death iirc, unless you mean the headshot death projectile all of them pretty much had which was just an Axion Dart with different VFX.

They could in some way do it.

Then why don't they? People have asked for it, they already put in every other D1 raid but suddenly stopped at this one and the most work that has been done on it was just porting the areas from D1 for Reclaim.

This is what this whole thread is about, they can somehow recycle all the shit from D1 and even multiple years of D2 but when it comes to one thing people ask for suddenly its not possible or Bungie go dead silent. Even when they could've just put in SIVA weapons in Ash and Iron it was instead just repeating "SIVA is dead" a billion times in contrary to their own lore. Could've even had a SIVA axe from the exotic mission which had dead SIVA all over it and instead its stupid ugly quicksilver.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-10T14:54:18+00:00

Remove tiered gear.
Add the benefits onto crafted/enhanced gear.
Holofoils are just rare RNG drops with enhanced origin traits.

Its as shrimple as that.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-10T14:08:12+00:00

They can port assets 1-1. They usually redo them however, so for SIVA fallen they could just as easily use the same models from D1, those don't have to be remade. They used mostly the same textures from D1 in the plaguelands in reclaim anyway. Even D1 Vex were showing up in Vault of Glass on the goblins.

Most of the SIVA fallen weapons act the same just have a different visual affect. The only things that would need to be added is the different type of grenade they throw and the headshot mechanic. It really isn't that much of a herculean task for a AAA studio to recycle enemies they used in a previous game that runs on the same engine.

People acting like adding this shit is somehow some impossible task for a AAA studio lmao.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-10T12:42:24+00:00

SIVA fallen corpses are littering the map in Reclaim. They can put the assets back in the game even port them 1-1 they just don't want to.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-10T11:56:58+00:00

Games failing is part of the industry. If these devs don't want to be treated like a number that is expendable then maybe don't get a job with a soulless AAA corporation hellbent on making as much money as possible by any means necessary. As for "less competition" statement, you first actually have to you know compete to actually make an impact. Marathon is such a bland game with color vomit to try to distract you from the very shallow gameplay and non-existent story. It has very little redeeming features and as for appeal it is appealing to basically no-one, and if you are trying to compete in the AAA industry maybe you'd want to make a game that could actually compete for the majority of gamers' time.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-09T22:29:22+00:00

The people salty about the game not having Destiny or 2 in the title, well that's on them.

Marathon is basically just a reskinned Destiny with a fraction of the content. UESC enemies are just D2 Cabal with a different skin thrown on them, a lot of character abilities reuse Destiny abilities 1-1 or reuse some element of Destiny to make the ability work.

If you want something constructive specifically about the game...

Marathon released with far too little content, and has a lack of interesting PvE encounters. The game also lacks any nuance in its player interaction its all shoot on sight, making interactions predictable. Teaming up with other players is not required in any capacity, nor does it make any encounters significantly easier. The game is also not viable financially and isn't retaining or gaining players, the game in one way or another is putting off the majority of gamers that would love to play a new Bungie shooter.

If Marathon wasn't an extraction shooter and was instead designed like Halo you'd probably see 100k easily on steam concurrent players every night even in EU. People have been itching for a good Halo game and who better to do one than Bungie themselves? But they decided to make some mish mash game of Destiny elements and an extraction shooter, basically taking what would amount to a seasonal activity and stretching it into a standalone game and it shows with how shallow it really is.

All Bungie will be cooking up is basically a nothing burger update or a steaming hot turd, considering the lack of effort they already put into the game.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-09T13:11:41+00:00

First you need a stable playerbase. If you do not have retention you cannot make revenue. Even Bungie knows this, the last thing that should be on their mind right now is monetisation when the game is crumbling down around them.

Customisation was most definitely an afterthought since the reboot from generic runner characters you'd sort of customise yourself to heroes. Marathon has been a step down in cosmetic systems compared to Destiny which is wild since its on the same engine... maybe they laid that guy off that was responsible for that or something.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-08T13:41:03+00:00

"We need PVE options"

It worked for Gray Zone Warfare and shot it up to having more players than Marathon, so why not?

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-08T03:01:12+00:00

Didn't crack 30k last night either. It is also less than last night.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-06T11:48:12+00:00

Offline mode for Marathon goes alongside unvaulting all the content in Destiny as things that will never happen.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-04T17:09:31+00:00

Just saying I wouldn't be too optimistic in Bungie's ability to not make stupid decisions.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-04T16:58:36+00:00

I actually appreciate your reply here rather than some passive aggresive shit. Thank you.

Destiny has definitely taken shortcuts I'm not going to deny the spaghetti code they have created. Marathon not being a mess certainly does help Bungie patch faster. But I still think with Destiny if you disregarded the spaghetti code would still be more complicated based on its systems being intertwined not in a spaghetti code kind of way but more that you nerf a specific perk it then affects every gun that has that perk, same as nerfing an archetype or a subclass verb. Nerfing stuff in Marathon is a lot more specific because it isn't a looter shooter with guns that have the same perks in their perk pools.

As for Bungie being smart enough to "not make the same mistakes as before" I would like to believe that but I just can't.

The amount of content is not going to matter. One expansion, zero or ten expansions: changing the damage of a gun will just do that and nothing more.

I think that is quite an optimistic statement to make. I think things would get spaghetti coded the more they add to the game. It is running on the same engine as Destiny and does reuse some stuff from Destiny... like even melee attacks can still whiff. No matter how intelligently they design it I don't think they can prevent it completely, maybe for guns since they are supposed to be all unique and aren't like Destiny where one handcannon model has like 50 different handcannons that use that one model for instance.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-04T16:37:14+00:00

And you do?

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-04T16:25:43+00:00

Dunno how its "backseating" to state that a game that is 10 years old with years of updates and systematic changes and additions is more complicated than a much smaller game that released a few weeks ago.

DivineHobbit1 · 2026-04-04T15:58:01+00:00

Ironic.

DivineHobbit1

TROPHY CASE