With another brutal round of 220 layoffs, Bungie has once again been through the wringer, and amidst reports of project cancellations, scaled back plans for Destiny 2, management troubles, and what have you, it’s hard to say with certainty what the future is going to hold for the legendary studio. We do, of course, know that its next big project is PvPvE extraction shooter Marathon, which, as per prior reports, is targeting a 2025 release– though it seems like that game might not be taking shape the way Bungie may have hoped either.
Speaking during a recent episode of YouTuber SkillUp’s Friends Per Second podcast, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier – who broke many of the aforementioned alleged stories – claimed that Marathon, too, is in trouble behind-the-scenes.
As per Schreier, the sentiment around Marathon is “not great” as of at least a few months ago, and that many that he has spoken to aren’t confident if the game is going to be able to release in 2025 as is currently planned.
“There’s a reason that it was planned for this year and slipped a whole year,” Schreier said. “The people that I’ve talked to are a little pessimistic about it even hitting its current planned deadline, but we’ll see. I don’t know exactly when that is, sometime in 2025, I’m not sure.”
“The sentiment is not great around it, at least as of a few months ago,” he said.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Bungie had replaced Christopher Barrett with former Valorant lead Joe Ziegler as Marathon’s new game director, and that under the latter’s leadership, the game had shifted focus away from customizable characters to a set cast of playable heroes. Read more on that through here.
Marathon is in development for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
