Destiny now has more than 20 million players

Destiny, a game supposedly about protecting the remnants of a ravaged Earth but mostly about hoping you randomly find an awesome rocket launcher, has reached a player base of over 20 million, according to publisher Activision Blizzard. COO Thomas Tippl said on the company’s Q1 earnings call that Destiny and card game Hearthstone had 50 million players combined; Blizzard announced 30 million players for Hearthstone earlier in the week, putting the Destiny figure at 20 million. It’s not clear how many of these are active players, or whether the figure includes those that only checked out Destiny’s beta or demo versions. But Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said that the average daily playtime among the “millions of active players” is about three hours, suggesting that a lot of players have found themselves hooked on Destiny’s repetitive, addictive loop despite its divided reception at launch. Destiny is the first game from Bungie after the Halo creators left Microsoft. The first-person shooter/MMO hybrid launched last September amid a storm of hype involving boastful predictions, a $500 million budget, and music from Paul McCartney.