Destiny 2: The Witch Queen off to a great start on Steam

eurogamer.net:

The launch of Destiny 2's new expansion The Witch Queen has peaked with 289,895 concurrent players on Steam — the platform's highest total since the launch of the game there back in September 2019.

Destiny 2's all-time Steam peak was very slightly higher — 292,314 people — back when it first arrived alongside 2019 expansion Shadowkeep.

125,000 players are currently playing Destiny 2 on Steam at the time of writing, and of course many more will be playing on consoles, where users figures are more opaque.

Fans report that The Witch Queen's launch seems to have gone fairly smoothly, although yesterday's pre-load was unavailable on PlayStation 4 due to a bug.

This left PS4 owners having to download the game's big update when servers went live yesterday at 5pm UK time — which may have lessened the load on other platforms.

The Witch Queen is Destiny 2's first major expansion since 2020's Beyond Light, which added the frozen world of Europa. The latest new destination, Savathun's Throne World, hosts a fresh campaign, a new raid and more.

The expansion also sees the removal of more older content, including 2018's Forsaken campaign and its Tangled Shore destination.