Marathon has been out and about for nearly a week now, and it’s sitting at 28,745 live players on Steam at the time of writing. That’s a drop from its peak of 88,337 players, and while the game is a solid addition to the extraction shooter space with excellent visuals and an engaging gameplay loop, losing as many players as it has in a week is surely a sign of trouble.
Of course, it isn’t as bad a loss as Concord, but it’s still saddening to see Bungie’s shooter fall as far as it has in such a short timeframe. It still holds a Very Positive rating on Steam despite the drop in player counts, but we can’t deny that it’s lost a fair bit of momentum. What has happened to a title that had so much potential, and likely still does?
We certainly don’t believe that Marathon is dead on arrival, but its troubles are definitely a cause for concern. Can Bungie stop the slide, or is this one going to be forgotten as time goes on? Let’s dive in and find out if this one is able to weather the storms it currently faces.
A Dose Of Reality
Marathon’s launch week has been kind of a reality check for Bungie if you just go by the numbers. If we take a look at its Steam charts in relation to ARC Raiders, which is currently the big player in the extraction shooter space, things become quite clear.
There are 119,191 live players on ARC Raiders, while Marathon only has 37,225. The 24-hour peak numbers are equally dismal for Marathon, with only 62,495 versus the 167,731 players that its rival has managed. The all-time peak numbers are also in ARC Raiders’ favor, with 481,966 against Marathon’s 88,337.
And yet, Marathon enjoys a higher percentage of positive reviews, although that number could go down if the game’s less-than-stellar showing continues over the next few weeks. It’s clear that the people playing it are finding things to like about it, a sentiment that’s quite evident in both critical and commercial opinions from its Server Slam weekend (more on that in a minute). Yes, it has issues, but it’s also a fairly good game.
And that’s a factor that prompts a deeper look into what’s currently going wrong for Marathon.
Pre-Launch Problems
We’d say that Marathon might have set itself up for its current problems well before its launch. For a title that had spent a long time in development, and one that was highly anticipated ahead of its planned 2025 release, the delay to 2026 is sure to have cost it some of the goodwill it had earned ahead of its debut. Its closed alpha, and the lackluster response to it, was probably a contributor to that delay, and for a title releasing in a very crowded shooter space, that’s a situation that was less than ideal.
The plagiarism accusations didn’t help one bit, and although Bungie managed to get ahead of the controversy and salvage the game’s reputation, the damage was done. Antireal’s assertion that she waited for the alpha test before coming forward with her suspicions was quite the blow to the game’s reputation. The fact that she’s now credited as a visual design consultant in-game is certainly the right thing to do, but for Marathon’s reputation, that’s certainly looking like a too little, too late kind of deal.
It’s Server Slam weekend run ahead of the final release was equally, if not more, damaging, as complaints about its confusing UI, PVP frequency, enemy friction, and the difficulty for new players who were unfamiliar with shooters were all factors that might have deterred more players from joining in on the fun when the game was dropped.
It’s a situation that showcases a distinct lack of goodwill even ahead of the game’s release, which might have been a straight-up death knell for any other title, but Marathon had enough in the tank to earn the benefit of the doubt. Which brings us to everything that’s gone wrong in the past week.
Friction-Induced Fragility
We chose the word friction with great care, as it’s the only way to describe what’s been going wrong for Marathon this past week. There’s a lot of ground to cover, and its onboarding is a great place to start. With a gameplay loop structured around picking up as much loot as you can before you head to your extraction point, it’s logical to assume that you need to kill as many rival runners and enemies as you can.
And while you might expect human players to present a greater threat than AI-controlled enemies on a map, things were topsy-turvy for Marathon, with a lot of complaints pointed towards the UESC robots being quite hard to kill. For new players looking to get started and gather up the gear they needed to do so, those robots posed quite a problem.
Yes, challenge is always welcome in any video game, but an unfair one stemming from a lack of balance is only a source of frustration rather than a path to a satisfying – and rewarding – victory. That the problem persisted despite complaints during the Server Slam weekend made things worse, and it was easy to perceive as a lack of proper acknowledgement from the developers.
For the few players who did manage to get past the robots and their fellow rivals, managing the gear they picked up was the next big obstacle, courtesy of a UI that seemed geared towards style over substance in a misguided effort to maintain visual consistency with the rest of the game. Yes, great visuals are always an advantage, but they cannot come at the cost of diminishing the overall experience in the eyes of players.
Of course, the difficulty was also a deterrent to players who preferred to fly solo, despite the addition of an option to use a pre-selected loadout that would ensure you weren’t losing any of your precious loot if you chose to take on a run without your buddies in tow. It alienated yet another group of players, a situation that adds to all the other woes that the game currently faces.
The fact that you lose everything you gather from a run in the event that you die is quite familiar to anyone who has played a Soulslike title, and it’s a mechanic that works very well in that genre. It’s most welcome in an extraction shooter, even though you don’t get another chance to go back and retrieve your lost loot, but that’s reliant on a gameplay loop that’s balanced enough to encourage starting over without the apprehension of losing yet again to a game where the odds seem unfairly stacked against you.
And then there are the contracts, which were bafflingly tied to your build’s progression while being quite dull in execution. It was almost always a case of fetch this or destroy that, and it got old too soon for any of it to feel actually meaningful when there were more interesting things to do in a map. However, being forced to take those objectives on was something even we found a tad distasteful, and we’re the kind to leave no objective unfulfilled in our games.
There were also complaints about monetization, a facet of its games that Bungie has historically struggled with, and the entire humdrum around pre-order rewards that the studio has since aimed to address with the beginning of a new season. Those are issues that could have, and should have been addressed before its launch, and the fact that they were there is quite damning indeed for the shooter’s future prospects.
But in the face of all these problems, Marathon is still getting a lot of praise. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Well, it’s quite a solid shooter as it turns out.
Finding Its Fans
The game does have its takers, and they’re probably the ones who make up its remaining player base. It isn’t too surprising that it hasn’t crashed and burned yet, buckling under the weight of the problems that are currently hounding it. For starters, it’s a solid blend of the hero and extraction genres, its unique shells managing to bring a lot of variety to its gameplay loop.
We personally loved the Assassin and the Thief shells, each coming with nifty tricks that we found very handy when we were out in the field. Shells aside, the gunplay lands quite well and feels quite fluid and fun once you begin to gather some momentum. It works very well with the art direction, the visuals managing to give the game a distinct flavor despite the maps being a tad too empty for our liking, although that’s a problem that can be addressed fairly easily.
The positive user sentiment on Steam is something that cannot be ignored, and it’s pretty easy to see why the game has managed to gather that goodwill. The PvPvE gameplay loop is full of surprises, and you’re bound to get caught up in its chaos before you even realize it. It’s a game where you make memories. Each match is an opportunity for you and your buddies to come away full of adrenaline, and hours of discussion about the mayhem you experienced are almost guaranteed. That’s probably the most disheartening thing about Marathon’s slump, in our opinion.
But we’re optimistic about its chances, although we must say that all of its problems could have been avoided if it had perhaps taken the time to further refine its launch package.
Was The Launch Version of Marathon Enough?
The fact that critical insights about the game have been delayed due to missing content like the Cryo Archive and Ranked mode is something that we believe is an avoidable mishap, and a part of the game’s release that might have helped it achieve a better launch week.
For starters, the lack of proper reviews is sure to have put off more than a few players who like to see what experts are saying about a title before they drop their hard-earned cash on it. That’s a fair sentiment, and is one that Bungie should have thought long and hard about.
The Season 1 Pass and the distinct lack of runner skins are another issue that the developers could have sidestepped from the get-go. But it’s good news that Bungie has stepped out in front of the complaints and made changes that should help earn back some brownie points on that front.
Which brings us to our thoughts on this whole sordid episode in Marathon’s brief life. That Bungie is making the effort to address most of the complaints aimed at the game is a good thing, sure, but there’s now little to no room for error if it wants the game to survive in the hearts and minds of a player base that grows ever more discerning, and is already on edge thanks to the mis-steps that have plagued the game.
Extraction shooters live and die on the momentum they build, their ability to onboard new players smoothly, and how effectively they manage to retain them once they’re drawn in. On all of those fronts, Marathon certainly isn’t out of the contest yet, but it’s on thin ice.
We’re just glad we didn’t have to witness a Concord-esque implosion, and we’re really hoping that a shooter that’s really fun when it fires on all cylinders can manage to turn things around and rise to greatness among its peers.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
