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[StreetsofBeige]

Red line to help illustrate how low the playerbase is. Source: SteamDB courtesy of Steam's own API.. i.e. Steam not 'my ass'. The way your posts are written you clearly don't care about Destiny (have you even played The Final Shape?) beyond pumping it up for your plastic box warring agenda

Destiny 2 on Steam right now is at it's lowest CCU even with Final Shape coming out earlier this year. People played it boosting the CCU, but fell hard shortly after.

 

[RJMacready73]

Supposedly, the reason was ND didn't have the resources to handle a GAAS game, and anything else they are working on (which is Intergalactic and surely LOU3). I dont think I remember anything about it being bad.

But what you probably got is internal politics.. Druckmann doesnt want Bungie (or anyone else) taking it over. And Bungie as master MP overseer recommended it shut down too, so they got fewer internal studios to compete against for GAAS. The CEO just agreed and let it go.

Could definitely see internal politics playing a part but as a whole, Sony basically shelved a guaranteed money maker and I get that ND simply aren't big enough nor ready to run a hugely successful live service game with their other commitments but Bungie could, as could those morons that made Concord, it's like walking away leaving money on the table for no real sound reason, do we know it was Bungie who recommended shelving the game?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Could definitely see internal politics playing a part but as a whole, Sony basically shelved a guaranteed money maker and I get that ND simply aren't big enough nor ready to run a hugely successful live service game with their other commitments but Bungie could, as could those morons that made Concord, it's like walking away leaving money on the table for no real sound reason, do we know it was Bungie who recommended shelving the game?

It was just my guess.

But you can tell the internal sentiment was cutting the cord for Factions 2. Even when Bungie had layoffs and Sony shifted over 50 people to SIE studios, it wasnt to help Factions 2 get to completion. It was to make a brand new game.

But who knows. Maybe internal testing said F2 was a bad game too.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I'd love to see a singleplayer or coop roguelike fps or tps from them tbh. It's a shame they're being pushed in that live service corner.

Bungie mentioned they want to explore the roguelite genre with Destiny 2 just a little while ago. I assume co-op would be a given.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

This is not playerbase, these are concurrent users. Meaning, how busy are the servers are in a given point of the day. Not the daily active users (daily userbase), weekly active users (daily userbase) or monthly active users (monthly userbase).

I mean if we want to be super pedantic it's peak daily concurrent users.

CCUs can give you an approximated idea of the userbase (like seeing that The Final Shape, but isn't accurate at all because two games with the same CCUs can have hugely different userbases: one can have less players but that play more times or longer per day/week/month than the other, or one can have all their users focused on a timezone or day of the week compared to the other.

Wow that's almost a good point if I were comparing Destiny 2 against other games, which I didn't.

Lower CCU doesn't imply that the userbase is smaller. It may mean that the userbase is the same but games play now less frequently (in case of 'old' GaaS games, typically many of them come back when they include important new content).

Of course it does. And we're comparing the same game, in the same point in its yearly content cycle. But let's not lose sight of the fact that I simply said Destiny (in general) is at an all-time low, which you petulantly disagreed with, so when I gave you a specific metric to appease your LARPing as an analyst you immediately pivoted into this silly CCU vs monthly active users semantics argument.

Yet here you are trying to invent this scenario where at the top end players are playing less, but at the bottom end where someone was only logging in once a week they are tenaciously hanging in there and still playing every week. And this is happening for absolutely no reason.

Peak users is literally half the low point from the previous expansion yet somehow the 'playerbase' can be the same, lmao. Take some remedial math and statistics classes please.

And this is only from Steam, when the game is also in other platforms like PS and Xbox. And well, CCUs aren't also good indicators of the revenue they make. As we can see there, TFS launch peak almost got their highest Steam CCU ever, with the Lightfall launch peak being the actual record. But the news we got from Sony/Bungie is that they considered that Lightfall underperformed and weren't happy with it, and that TFS instead has been very successful and they are happy with it.

We don't have any factual data of the game being in an all time low regarding revenue or userbase. Only in Steam specific CCUs, which is somewhat an indicator, but as explained can't be extrapolated to its userbase or revenue, specially when adding the non-Steam versions to the mix.

In any case, it's a 7 years old game that performed at top level all this time, and it's normal that around at this time it would start to sunset or would already sunseted. But still considering this, according to Valve Destiny 2 is one of the 10 top grossing games of the year in Steam.

And shut the fuck up with "plastic box warring agenda" bullshit, don't be an asshole idiot.

Lol is that right? So Destiny 2 isn't falling off but if it is then this, 7 years, is precisely the time it's supposed to, so this is actually a good thing! And you're using that logic to defend a game you don't even play. That kind of nonsense only makes sense when viewed through the eyes of a fanboy.

 

[nnytk]

Bungie mentioned they want to explore the roguelite genre with Destiny 2 just a little while ago. I assume co-op would be a given.

Oof that would be great. Bungie's take on Risk of Rain 2 or Returnal would be really exciting. I'm imagining Halo quality gunplay, in third-person, with AAA production value and world building.

 

[kapshin]

Bungie spungie

 

[marquimvfs]

Bungie made some of the best console FPS of all time, and basically single handedly proved that FPS could work on a controller.

I thought that Rare was the team that made GoldenEye.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

I thought that Rare was the team that made GoldenEye.

The modern FPS on console is built upon Halo (technically there was an Alien fps on PS1 that used the dual stick controls first) as a foundation more then Goldeneye.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Can someone explain to me why it was important for Bungie to not simply be bought by Microsoft years ago, but it's ok to be absorbed by Sony?

 

[marquimvfs]

The modern FPS on console is built upon Halo (technically there was an Alien fps on PS1 that used the dual stick controls first) as a foundation more then Goldeneye.

Half true. Not denying the Halo importance, but Halo itself wouldn't have been what it was without Goldeneye. It was the ultimate proof that FPS could be successful on consoles.

 

[Bernardougf]

Can someone explain to me why it was important for Bungie to not simply be bought by Microsoft years ago, but it's ok to be absorbed by Sony?

Their contract with Sony stipulated certain sales/production/profit goals that weren't met ... this opened the doors for whats happening now. So its on them.

 

[yurinka]

I mean if we want to be super pedantic it's peak daily concurrent users.

Wow that's almost a good point if I were comparing Destiny 2 against other games, which I didn't.

Of course it does. And we're comparing the same game, in the same point in its yearly content cycle. But let's not lose sight of the fact that I simply said Destiny (in general) is at an all-time low, which you petulantly disagreed with, so when I gave you a specific metric to appease your LARPing as an analyst you immediately pivoted into this silly CCU vs monthly active users semantics argument.

DAU, MAU (or not that frequently WAU) are the metrics that we use in companies when analyzing the evolution of the userbase size of a game in general, not just when comparing to others. Not CCUs, that metric is mostly only for the server guys, because it's one of the metrics that helps them estimate if servers will need to be scaled up or down (or not) for the next few days or weeks.

So yes, it is wrong to try to illustrate the playerbase using the CCUs of just one of their platforms where the game is. And well, even worse doing it for entire franchise when this game having becomed F2P must be the one with more players.

I'm not an analyst, I'm a gamedev who worked during years in GaaS with dozens of millions of users and metrics like 3 million DAUs trying to explain how things are to a random internet user who has no idea of what is talking about.

Yet here you are trying to invent this scenario where at the top end players are playing less, but at the bottom end where someone was only logging in once a week they are tenaciously hanging in there and still playing every week. And this is happening for absolutely no reason.

I am not inventing anything, this is how basically all GaaS work: big updates with new content and features and their related marketing brings back some of the existing users and brings new ones, causing userbase peaks in a given platform. And after some time playing the game, sometimes sooner sometimes later, players get bored and leave the game.

In most cases, GaaS have a big launch peak and some -normally smaller- peaks for releases in new countries/stores/platforms/big content updates and ignoring these peaks the userbase keep slowly declining (faster or slower depending on its user retention) but even in the top GaaS there's a point where the game 'sunsets': its active userbase (so the amount of revenue it generates, so the amount of money they can reinvest on to countinuing supporting the game) reaches a point where devs need to meaningfully decrease or even stop the development they put on post launch development of the game, which also cause future further decrease in userbase even more 'sunseting' its development, leaving it to the minimum fixes and server maintenance. As the game continues decreasing its revenue, it reaches a point where can't even pay the servers and after some time in that point it's when they decide to shut down the servers.

I haven't talked about top or bottom end players. But it's a fact that some players play more frequently than others and that players in different time zones play in different hours, and that as players leave and join the game, the activity distribution across days of the week or hours of the day keeps changing. Some players play a game daily or almost daily, other players play one or twice per week, or some other ones less frequently. Some even come back after months or years to see how the game evolved since then, particularly to play some specific new event or update.

I am not defending anything, I'm just explaining how GaaS work, putting that data into context and sharing additional factual data from the point of view of someone who has worked on with these things.

And you're using that logic to defend a game you don't even play. That kind of nonsense only makes sense when viewed through the eyes of a fanboy.

I am not defending anything, I'm just explaining to someone who has no fucking idea what is talking about why it is wrong using a CCU graph of only one of the multiple platforms of a game, which turns out to be the most played of a franchise, to say that the playerbase of the game -or the franchise- is in all time lows. And to put them into context I explained the related metrics and how playerbase normally evolves in GaaS.

In addition to this, shared the fact that Destiny 2 has been one of the top 10 top grossing games of the year on Steam (as happened every year since the game was released on Steam) and that Sony/Bungie are happy with the TFS performance, which shows it's in good shape.

And I don't need to play the game to do so. But since you keep insisting yes, I played it. I played a lot Destiny 1, bought Destiny 2 at launch but almost didn't play it. I went back with TFS and found out I don't understand/remember several things and didn't play it a lot either. I think these guys have to make things simpler or explain them better for new users or players who come back after a long period of time. But well, I normally don't like FPS, I usually prefer other genres particularly those more focused on SP.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Their contract with Sony stipulated certain sales/production/profit goals that weren't met ... this opened the doors for whats happening now. So its on them.

Ya.

Nobody knows what the targets are but considering Sony is taking the axe to bungie past year or so means they shit the bed.

Early this year or last year they missed forecasts by 45%. That was surely what did it as all these changes came after.

Who the fuck misses forecasts by 45%?

At any company I’ve worked at, missing annual targets by 5% is even a stretch and never done before. I think the most my company or dept (when I did roles that focused on the division and not the whole company) probably missed by 1-2% at most.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

DAU, MAU (or not that frequently WAU) are the metrics that we use in companies when analyzing the evolution of the userbase size of a game in general, not just when comparing to others. Not CCUs, that metric is mostly only for the server guys, because it's one of the metrics that helps them estimate if servers will need to be scaled up or down (or not) for the next few days or weeks.

This isn't rocket science. Plot your daily peak CCUs against your DAUs and tell me with a straight face they're not strongly correlated.

So yes, it is wrong to try to illustrate the playerbase using the CCUs of just one of their platforms where the game is. And well, even worse doing it for entire franchise when this game having becomed F2P must be the one with more players.

What's funny is my chart is solely for the Steam i.e. (fake) F2P era. For some reason you're trying to bring Destiny 1 into it now?

It's very possible that in the pre-Steam days that the playercount was lower. It wouldn't be surprising. I think around Curse of Osiris they were at "omg we're about to go out of business" levels of panic. So fine, let's call it a 5-year low instead of all-time. It makes no difference to the argument about the current state of the game.

As for the 'just one platform' thing... that's fucking hilarious especially considering you're using the unordered Steam revenue lists to back up your argument. That's just one platform bro! How do I know even a single person bought the game on Xbox from that?!?! (See how stupid your argument sounds?).

And that unordered list is about a share of revenue that isn't going to be consistent year to year, even ignoring that it could have been #2 on last year's list and #10 on this year's list. Even if the revenue is the same, it says nothing of the investment to generate that revenue. And low-and-behold they have canceled the Destiny spin-off project and laid a bunch of people off on the development team. But we know Sony wasn't happy with say the Lightfall era, as they missed revenue projections by a reported 45%.

I'm not an analyst, I'm a gamedev who worked during years in GaaS with dozens of millions of users and metrics like 3 million DAUs trying to explain how things are to a random internet user who has no idea of what is talking about.

Appeal to authority time! Oh joy! In that case I just must know, Alanah Pearce gamedev, or John Carmack gamedev?

I am not inventing anything, this is how basically all GaaS work: big updates with new content and features and their related marketing brings back some of the existing users and brings new ones, causing userbase peaks in a given platform. And after some time playing the game, sometimes sooner sometimes later, players get bored and leave the game.

In most cases, GaaS have a big launch peak and some -normally smaller- peaks for releases in new countries/stores/platforms/big content updates and ignoring these peaks the userbase keep slowly declining (faster or slower depending on its user retention) but even in the top GaaS there's a point where the game 'sunsets': its active userbase (so the amount of revenue it generates, so the amount of money they can reinvest on to countinuing supporting the game) reaches a point where devs need to meaningfully decrease or even stop the development they put on post launch development of the game, which also cause future further decrease in userbase even more 'sunseting' its development, leaving it to the minimum fixes and server maintenance. As the game continues decreasing its revenue, it reaches a point where can't even pay the servers and after some time in that point it's when they decide to shut down the servers.

I haven't talked about top or bottom end players. But it's a fact that some players play more frequently than others and that players in different time zones play in different hours, and that as players leave and join the game, the activity distribution across days of the week or hours of the day keeps changing. Some players play a game daily or almost daily, other players play one or twice per week, or some other ones less frequently. Some even come back after months or years to see how the game evolved since then, particularly to play some specific new event or update.

I am not defending anything, I'm just explaining how GaaS work, putting that data into context and sharing additional factual data from the point of view of someone who has worked on with these things.

I am not defending anything, I'm just explaining to someone who has no fucking idea what is talking about why it is wrong using a CCU graph of only one of the multiple platforms of a game, which turns out to be the most played of a franchise, to say that the playerbase of the game -or the franchise- is in all time lows. And to put them into context I explained the related metrics and how playerbase normally evolves in GaaS.

In addition to this, shared the fact that Destiny 2 has been one of the top 10 top grossing games of the year on Steam (as happened every year since the game was released on Steam) and that Sony/Bungie are happy with the TFS performance, which shows it's in good shape.

You know what's funny? The Steam graph shows big peaks for all the major content releases and mini-peaks for all the seasonal stuff just like you describe happens for the 'playerbase'. It just proves my point that it is reasonably representative.

And I don't need to play the game to do so. But since you keep insisting yes, I played it. I played a lot Destiny 1, bought Destiny 2 at launch but almost didn't play it. I went back with TFS and found out I don't understand/remember several things and didn't play it a lot either. I think these guys have to make things simpler or explain them better for new users or players who come back after a long period of time. But well, I normally don't like FPS, I usually prefer other genres particularly those more focused on SP.

Oh it's uniquely terrible in that regard. The craziest thing is I couldn't explain what a new player should do either, despite being an active player with at least a thousand hours (hard to say, there were some AFK autohotkey farms so I can't really trust my Steam hours).

But being an active player does help one evaluate the state of the game. You can feel it in the queue times and the lack of activity in the LFG Discords. Wow this game feels dead -> *checks SteamDB* -> oh it is dead!

I'm not even really sure what the argument is about at this point. All I initially wanted to say is that drawing down support for Destiny and putting all their eggs in the Marathon basket seems needlessly risky. Marathon is a game that seemingly nobody asked for... like yeah okay it might end up being really good in which case I'm sure a lot of people will play it. But if it's just an okay extraction shooter I could easily see it flopping spectacularly.

The Destiny strategy appears to be accepting an inevitable loss in players and trying to milk the remaining players with cheaper-to-produce content. The layoffs have already negatively impacted even basic things like their recycled holiday event which despite being almost identical to previous years had tons of bugs, including progression blocking bugs.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Destiny 2 on Steam right now is at it's lowest CCU even with Final Shape coming out earlier this year. People played it boosting the CCU, but fell hard shortly after.

It's no wonder, either. I was playing crucible a few weeks ago and it's only the sweaty no lifers still playing the meta crutch game, and matches take a lot longer now because of so few people still playing.

 

[yurinka]

This isn't rocket science. Plot your daily peak CCUs against your DAUs and tell me with a straight face they're not strongly correlated.

They are not and previously explained why before: they are different things and these CCUs are only from one of the multiple platforms where the game is available.

What's funny is my chart is solely for the Steam i.e. (fake) F2P era. For some reason you're trying to bring Destiny 1 into it now?

You are the one who was talking about 'the Destiny franchise', not me.

And yes, these CCUs are even less representative because in addition to don't cover both games and all platforms of this game, doesn't cover its (non-F2P, when I bought it) pre-Steam period.

It's very possible that in the pre-Steam days that the playercount was lower. It wouldn't be surprising.

Yes, it's possible because going F2P in most cases increases the userbase, and adding an additional platform -even if with a late port- normally also increases it.

I think around Curse of Osiris they were at "omg we're about to go out of business" levels of panic.

It was released back in December 2017, a couple of months after the game (September 2017).

Wikipedia says "Destiny 2 was also the second highest-grossing console game of 2017 in North America (behind Call of Duty: WWII), and was also Activision's biggest PC release based on units sold".

That doesn't sound as 'omg we're about to go out of business' at all.

So fine, let's call it a 5-year low instead of all-time. It makes no difference to the argument about the current state of the game.

In Steam daily CCU peaks yes, but we have no idea regarding its active userbase or revenue, particularly in general.

What we know is that -like every year- continues being a top 10 top grossing game of the year in Steam. And that they weren't happy with the Lightfall performance but were happy with the The Final Shape performance.

As for the 'just one platform' thing... that's fucking hilarious especially considering you're using the unordered Steam revenue lists to back up your argument. That's just one platform bro! How do I know even a single person bought the game on Xbox from that?!?! (See how stupid your argument sounds?).

Yes, I'm using that list to prove it continues being a top 10 game on Steam of the year regarding revenue made in that platform despite being 7 years old and the decline in Steam CCU. And because it's the only data we have regarding its revenue on Steam.

Meaning, it continues being a great performer in Steam and that CCU numbers don't imply any drama. Specially considering it's one of the platforms.

And that unordered list is about a share of revenue that isn't going to be consistent year to year, even ignoring that it could have been #2 on last year's list and #10 on this year's list. Even if the revenue is the same, it says nothing of the investment to generate that revenue. And low-and-behold they have canceled the Destiny spin-off project and laid a bunch of people off on the development team. But we know Sony wasn't happy with say the Lightfall era, as they missed revenue projections by a reported 45%.

The unordered lists just means it's one of the top biggest money makers of the year in Steam, which means they made a shit ton of money just from Steam that year so aren't doomed.

Obiously the amount of money needed to enter the top 10 each year is different, but must still be a lot of money. Specially considering that the revenue generated by Steam grows over time and most of its revenue -like in all platforms- is generated by a few dozen top performers. And well, in addition to this, Destiny 2 obviously must continue making money in the other places, particularly in PS.

Regarding the investment required to make this money, in recent times they decreased it and changed their yearly content to something that should cost them less going forward.

Appeal to authority time! Oh joy! In that case I just must know, Alanah Pearce gamedev, or John Carmack gamedev?

As far as I know they haven't worked in the live operations area of a large GaaS as I did, so they may not have the same related knowledge I have.

You know what's funny? The Steam graph shows big peaks for all the major content releases and mini-peaks for all the seasonal stuff just like you describe happens for the 'playerbase'. It just proves my point that it is reasonably representative.

No. The big releases (launch of the game, big expansions, etc) as I mentioned have peaks of both active userbase and CCU. But as I mentioned they aren't proportional, the difference between both even change inside the life of the game.

As an example, with the same active userbase some post launch updates can implement some retention focused changes that may increase the gameplay session lenght and average of daily gameplay sessions per user. Which means that with the same DAU/WAU they would have higher CCU. And the opposite.

I'm not even really sure what the argument is about at this point. All I initially wanted to say is that drawing down support for Destiny and putting all their eggs in the Marathon basket seems needlessly risky. Marathon is a game that seemingly nobody asked for... like yeah okay it might end up being really good in which case I'm sure a lot of people will play it. But if it's just an okay extraction shooter I could easily see it flopping spectacularly.

They aren't putting their games in the same basket. They said that for now they'll focus Bungine on Destiny and Marathon, and have the third team with the new IIP too (now under PS Studios instead).

The Marathon tease broke records, so apparently caught the attention of a lot of people.

The Destiny strategy appears to be accepting an inevitable loss in players and trying to milk the remaining players with cheaper-to-produce content.

Yes, pretty likely this is the idea: to reduce costs in a GaaS that may be nearing sunseting or starting to sunset. This and/or try to optimize the profitability of Bungie in general.

 

[intheinbetween]

Can someone explain to me why it was important for Bungie to not simply be bought by Microsoft years ago, but it's ok to be absorbed by Sony?

Bungie wanted creative freedom or some shit like that iirc