Activision Thinks Destiny 2 is Failing

The Destiny series is… interesting, when looked at through the lenses of sales, fans, and popularity. While there’s always been a baseline hype for the game that doesn’t seem to wane, Destiny’s popularity seems to follow a weird upward, but bumpy slope. The game launches, people like it, then they get tired of it fast when the seams begin to show, but then Bungie releases a few expensive DLC expansions and at some point, something just clicks and it suddenly ‘works’. For Destiny 1, that was Rise of Iron, and for Destiny 2, it seems to be Forsaken.

But despite good sales and full-price expansions, Activision had admitted in its third-quarter earnings call that Destiny 2 is not performing as well as they want.

As Activision COO Coddy Johnson said during the call:

"Forsaken is a high quality expansion of content into the universe, honestly some of the highest quality content we've seen in the franchise to date… it really came out of Activision and Bungie working together to address community concerns post-Destiny 2 holistically—talking to players ... it needed a fundamental review of how to offer deeper endgame, greater powers, greater rewards, and engage players."

At the time of writing (and this will likely remain the case), we don’t have any sort of player count for Destiny 2. The base game is currently free to download until November 18, which will no doubt boost player numbers, but if those players will go on to buy the expansions – or engage with the premium currency – is obviously something we don’t know.

Now, the really troubling thing about this news (I’m told) is that right now Destiny 2 is in a really good spot and fans are very happy with how things are going, both from a gameplay and a monetization position. But if Activision is unhappy with how much money they’re earning… the real question is how they plan to fix that.

And the answer to that question is probably going to be bad.