The Destiny 2 Player Count vs Marathon comparison is not looking great for Bungie’s newer shooter, with Destiny 2 still pulling in far more players on Steam despite being much older and already moving into a reduced-support phase.
That is the surprising part.
Marathon launched in 2026 as Bungie’s next major live-service game and reached a strong peak early on. But its player count dropped sharply after launch, while Destiny 2 continued to attract tens of thousands of players at the same time.
Recent Steam numbers have shown Destiny 2 sitting many times higher than Marathon on some days, even though Bungie has already released what it called the final major Destiny 2 patch.
Destiny 2 Is Still Hard to Replace
Destiny 2 has one obvious advantage: almost a decade of weapons, raids, builds, subclasses and player investment.
People have spent years building characters and learning the game, so moving to another shooter is not as simple as downloading something new.
Marathon is also a very different kind of experience.
It focuses on extraction gameplay, where players enter dangerous areas, collect loot and try to escape. Destiny 2 is much broader, with PvE missions, raids, dungeons, PvP and a huge amount of older content.
Bungie has already tried to make Marathon more welcoming by experimenting with PvE-focused content, and that helped its numbers jump for a period. Still, Destiny 2 continues to show how difficult it is to replace a live-service game once players have years invested in it.
The comparison is even more awkward because Bungie clearly needs Marathon to become its next long-term success.
For now, its older game is still doing much of the heavy lifting.
Even Destiny 2’s Bugs Are Keeping Players Busy
There is another strange sign that Destiny 2 is far from dead.
Players are still finding new ways to break it.
A recent ammo exploit allowed players to generate huge amounts of Special Ammo using certain armor bonuses. Bungie quickly disabled the affected bonus in Crucible playlists, but similar tricks have remained useful in PvE and solo endgame runs.
That may sound like a small side story, but it says something about the community.
Destiny 2 players are still testing builds, hunting glitches and trying to push difficult content in ways Bungie never intended. Even with major development winding down, the game still has an active group of players finding new things to do.
That is something Marathon has not built yet.
Marathon may still improve over time, especially if Bungie keeps adding modes and content, but right now the numbers tell a simple story.
Bungie’s future may be Marathon.
Its most loyal players are still spending a lot of time in Destiny 2.
Bungie announced that Marathon is live, while Steam Charts tracks Destiny 2’s public Steam numbers.
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