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Destiny 2 breaks its Steam concurrent player record with release of Lightfall expansion

Previously, Destiny 2 is said to have peaked of around 220,000 players on Steam, but the Lightfall expansion pushed its player count to over 300k.

TJ Denzer

March 1, 2023 9:10 AM

Image via Bungie

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It’s a big week for Destiny 2. The latest era of the game has launched with the release of the Lightfall expansion, and the player base came out to support it big time. Destiny 2: Lightfall not only saw a huge surge in players. It also led to the game breaking its own concurrent player record on Steam by nearly 100,000 additional players.

This astounding stat was seen on the Destiny 2 Steam tracker pages of SteamDB, as shared by Forbes contributor Paul Tassi. SteamDB reports that Destiny 2’s newest concurrent player record (that is, the most players playing at one time) was set on February 28, 2023, the day of Lightfall’s launch. At the time of this writing, that record now sits at 316,750 concurrent players. According to Tassi, the previous concurrent record for Destiny 2 was somewhere around 220,000 players. That means around 100,000 more showed up for this latest expansion.

Those are some good concurrent numbers, and Bungie must surely be excited about them. Lightfall has been a much anticipated new expansion for Destiny 2, bringing the new big story chapter for the game, as well as fun features like the new Strand subclass for all Guardians and the ability to use it as a grappling hook around the game in both traversal and combat. These alongside a massive array of tweaks, bug fixes, and improvements for the game mean Destiny 2 had a little something all of its players could enjoy this week.

It will be interesting to see if the launch day concurrent player numbers of Destiny 2: Lightfall are the last peak we see for the time being, especially as we look forward to the latest Raid launching and the contest to be the first squad to beat it that comes with that. Stay tuned as we continue to watch for new updates and developments, and be sure to check out our Lightfall coverage and Destiny 2 Strategy Guide for all of your Guardian needs.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.