But one of the more interesting stories out of this whole ordeal is Marathon. When Bungie announced that its flagship looter shooter would no longer receive new content…well, some fans didn’t take it very kindly, and resorted to review-bombing the extraction shooter (which wasn’t enough to really drag down its Steam score but still). A small dispute of sorts broke out as many encouraged boycotting Marathon.

This all made for an awkward launch to its second season, NIGHTFALL, on June 2nd. In terms of new content, it added a night version of Dire Marsh, imaginatively titled Night Marsh. And while it did offer several new additions, from oppressive darkness that required light sources to new enemy types, the real appeal was seemingly in the new limited PvE mode, where a squad with Sponsored Kits could occupy the map for the first several minutes before Rooks, a Runner Shell meant for solos, began backfilling.

Even with all the uproar around Destiny 2, and thanks in part to a free week, Marathon crawled back up to just under 41,000 peak concurrent players on Steam. Of course, this is still a massive drop from nearly 89,000 concurrent players when it launched in March, but surely this momentum—with all these changes, new features, and loot—would hold…right?

"Even with all the uproar around Destiny 2, and thanks in part to a free week, Marathon crawled back up to just under 41,000 peak concurrent players on Steam."

Well, no. Two weeks later, and Marathon is slowly sliding back down to where it was before Season 2’s launch. Yikes.

There are several ways of looking at this, of course. The market is overly saturated with online games, especially in the free-to-play space where most want to stick with their comfort picks. The season’s release timing – the same day as State of Play – coupled with Destiny 2‘s end of support and preceding several major showcases is just bad timing in terms of exposure and word of mouth. The live-service business model is one that’s seen nothing but losses at this point, particularly earlier this year with Highguard. Marathon also costs $40 – not the highest price of admission but also not enough to beat free. And even when it was free, the number of players willing to check it out, at least on Steam, is disappointing at best.

It would be enough to chalk it up as another live-service failure and move on, but that’s not quite so simple. For starters, Marathon reportedly cost more than $200 million, close to $250 million, and it’s confirmed to have been in development for four years. That budget isn’t too hard to believe considering the pre-launch marketing, the all-star voice cast, and so on (and yet it launched with even fewer PvP maps than Destiny 1, but that’s neither here nor there). But the fact that Bungie was willing to delay it proves that (a) the overall state of the game was nowhere near as polished as it wanted, (b) it needed time to build some positive buzz around it, and (c) Sony clearly has a significant amount riding on it.

I mean, look no further than the company’s statements after its last financial report, where it was revealed to have suffered $765 million in impairment losses because of Bungie. It even admitted outright that the developer’s title portfolio “did not reach our expectations.”

"For starters, Marathon reportedly cost more than $200 million, close to $250 million, and it’s confirmed to have been in development for four years."

That said, it wasn’t going to pull a Concord and suddenly abandon the game. Sony noted strong reviews, including on Steam, and high player retention. So the goal was to then “improve the performance of the game by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the gameplay experience, and expansion of the user base.”

However, Bungie has done all these things. Not only could it not reach the heights of the game’s launch, but player numbers have dropped right back down to what they were before.

And that’s a problem for many reasons because that apparent near $250 million budget probably doesn’t account for post-launch content. Or the cost of running servers. Or the cost of additional marketing, like those fancy cinematic trailers.

Sales figures remain unknown – all we have are reports that it had 2.2 million players in March. It’s very much possible that there’s a thriving community on consoles, but even in terms of actual numbers, it appears to be far below the likes of, say, ARC Raiders – another extraction shooter whose Steam player base is nowhere near its peak.

The problem with Marathon is, and always has been, the more hardcore PvP approach. Bungie could take every step possible to mitigate gear losses or pile on the loot, but it was built from day one to be a more ruthless competitive experience. It’s a game where a highly skilled player could absolutely thrive…just as much as a highly skilled team could effectively shut down anyone, and wipe out a good chunk of their progress. Unlike ARC Raiders, the avenues for avoiding other players, much less getting matched with those who aren’t out for blood, are far lower. And I say this as someone who enjoyed my time with it, learning the ins and outs of Tau Ceti IV – its hazardous flora, its mysterious events, and the sheer terror of trying to survive while savoring the gunplay.

"The problem with Marathon is, and always has been, the more hardcore PvP approach."

The funny thing is that it’s nowhere near as hardcore or realistic as Escape from Tarkov, and yet, even that’s seeing better Steam numbers. Marathon definitely offers a far more polished experience, but it’s also trying to appeal to a wider audience. First impressions matter though, and those who weren’t hooked from the get-go, either because of the messy UI or the punishing gameplay, clearly didn’t want to stick around. Which makes these experimental PvE modes all the more questionable, because Bungie has a PvE-focused game that it’s committed so many resources to over the years, just recently put out to pasture.

I can’t really tell you if there’s a solution to the whole Marathon problem because it may have been doomed from the start. Even with its announcement, the sheer bafflement at the classic FPS trilogy being turned into an extraction shooter was overwhelming. There was hope at the time that Bungie, of all developers, could probably pull it off. Call it a coin toss, because even the most skeptical of Destiny 2 players (read: me) admitted that the studio had its wins here and there.

But for Sony, it’s probably becoming clearer that Marathon won’t become a worthy live-service addition. It may be fine enough for a small hardcore community, but with that budget and given the spending on post-launch content – never mind how much Bungie costs to maintain in general – that’s simply not enough.

And with rumors of layoffs looming large at the studio, Sony may be content to just let Marathon ride out the remainder of its roadmap, offsetting costs by paying fewer salaries. By this time next year, it wouldn’t be surprising if it too gets that tearful end-of-support warning. Such is the nature of the industry, but you would think that Sony would have known better from the start rather than continuing to persist. But such is the siren of live-service, and the fate of those ensnared by its song.

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.

The trailer begins with the Vandal perched atop a high wall, looking at some enemy forces coming in through drop ships. After almost immediately antagonizing them, Vandal then leaps into action, all while dodging a hail of gunfire. Eventually, after getting to a better vantage point, the Vandal decides to strike, taking out a single enemy and dropping a grenade to wipe the rest of the squad out. The trailer culminates with the shell using their high speed and ability to get a jump boost to get to the squad’s leader.

Marathon is currently in the midst of its second season, dubbed NIGHTFALL. Bungie has confirmed that the season will mark the arrival of two new game modes, with the first one focusing largely on PvE with “light” PvP elements, and the second one being purely PvE-focused. The first one was launched at the season’s start, and the second one is slated to be released at a later date.

NIGHTFALL also brought with it a new variant of Dire Marsh, dubbed Night Marsh. In a blog post, Bungie noted that this variant has been designed to be “slower-paced than Day Marsh and plays more like a survival horror experience, with slightly fewer players and extra environmental challenges with navigating the darkness and threats within.”

Despite Bungie’s continued post-launch support for Marathon, the fact that it hasn’t really been getting the number of players that the studio or parent company Sony would be happy with isn’t exactly a secret. Sony CFO Lin Tao had noted back in May that one of the company’s aims in the coming months is to improve its overall performance by bringing in more players.

“Going forward, we aim to improve the performance of [Marathon] by working to retain highly engaged core users through the introduction of additional content, further improvements in the gameplay experience, and expansion of the user base,” she said.

This would eventually lead to the Marathon Open Play Week earlier this month, which invited players to give the PvPvE extraction shooters a shot for a whole week. The Open Play Week also included the Sponsored Survival PvE mode.

Interestingly, the Open Play Week would come with its own host of problems; some PS5 players discovered that they could get their hands on the Digital Deluxe Edition of Marathon for only $14 during the week. This turned out to have been a mistake, however, leading to Sony quickly updating the PlayStation Store page for the game to offer clarification that the $14 price tag is only for the Digital Deluxe itself, and doesn’t include the base game, which would be needed to access the content.

It hasn’t all been great, but we can safely say that this is a title that we’re all going to miss. The trailer seems to understand that, and there’s a hint of the sadness that sudden goodbyes often bring, underlining all the cool stuff coming on June 9th. Earth is on the mend, and the Guardians must look towards the future. There are still things to do, and new triumphs and rewards to uncover in the Pantheon, where you’re going to be taking on returning Raid Bosses with cool new Distortion abilities that look quite nasty to be on the receiving end of.

Sparrow Racing League is making its return, and you’re going to be racing against your fellow Guardians on some very cool-looking speeders. The future beckons, but whether that includes Destiny 3 is still uncertain. It might have made learning about the game’s last days a tad easier, and perhaps even helped lessen the shock of what might have been the best-kept secret at Bungie. Nevertheless, it’s nearly time to tip our collective hats to a looter shooter that has had a good run, all things considered.

However, Sony quickly caught onto many players trying to take advantage of this, and has updated the PlayStation Store page for Marathon to offer some clarification. An attempt to grab the Deluxe Edition of Marathon for cheaper than even the base game through this method will now warn you that you are only buying the extra goodies that come with the Deluxe Edition, and that the purchase doesn’t include the game itself.

“Purchasing this product will grant access to the Deluxe Edition content only for the duration of the Open Play Week, after which accessing this content will require purchase of the Marathon Standard Edition,” wrote Sony. “The price displayed reflects only the Deluxe Edition content add-ons, not the Standard Edition price.”

According to Mp1st’s report, the PlayStation Store description for Marathon’s Deluxe Edition seemingly also listed the base game as being part of the entire package. This was likely the primary cause of the confusion among players who were trying to buy the title during the Open Play Week.

As one would expect, the Marathon community hasn’t taken too kindly to this move by Sony and Bungie. One player took to social media to note that, “this is exactly why people hate Bungie bro, and I play Marathon every day, what is this s***.”

Discussions about the subject on the Marathon subreddit have seen similar levels of confusion and anger from the community. While some have noted that this was essentially the equivalent of a pricing error, others raised the question of why Bungie didn’t create a separate game client that could be used to access the Open Play Week and not much else.

As for players who may have grabbed the Deluxe Edition during Open Play Week in the hopes of getting a cheap copy of Marathon, if they are no longer interested in picking up the base game, Sony still has its refund options available.

Marathon’s Open Play Week was kicked off on June 2nd across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. The title will be available to free until June 9th, beyond which, those interested in continuing their time with the PvPvE extraction shooter will need to buy the game. Interestingly, the Open Play Week also features one of Marathon’s two experimental PvE game modes – Sponsored Survival.

The start of the Open Play Week coincided with Bungie kicking off season 2 of Marathon, which brought with it a new matchmaking system and the new Night Marsh map, which has been described as offering a survival horror experience by the studio.

In a typical match, all Runner crews spawn on the map at the same time (barring any Rooks who can join one in progress). Sponsored Survival takes place on Night Marsh, the new map, but only one crew will start. They’ll have a few minutes to explore and battle the UESC (and other monstrosities) before the Rooks start to join.

You could leave them alone and go about your business, strike up a temporary alliance, gun them down as you please or exfil early. Either way, when 18 minutes have passed, the final exfil will be available. Just in case you’re joining as a Rook and worried about the sheer firepower of the Runner Crew, the latter can only have Sponsored Kits at the start.

What happens if they find better weapons or make up for that with better coordination? Well, you better run fast. Note that all Rooks will immediately be redirected into Sponsored Survival as it’s available, so even if you’re not a new player, you might as well take the opportunity to learn the intricacies of Night Marsh.

Once again, this is only the first PvE mode – the second arrives later in Season 2 and won’t have PvP at all. It’s all experimental, so whether they’re permanent additions to the game or not remains to be seen.

Marathon Season 2: NIGHTFALL goes live at the same time as the Open Play Week for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Head here for what you should know before jumping in.

While the report notes that the decision to end support for Destiny 2 was made earlier this year, discussions started getting more serious following the release of Renegades owing to the expansion’s poor commercial performance. A major subject was whether Bungie would give up on its more recent two-expansion model in favor of switching to its older model, where it would release a single, larger expansion that would then be supported with year-long updates.

Destiny 3 was also discussed, and there don’t seem to be any indications that Bungie is keen on revisiting the franchise, at least for now. Another interesting idea was for a major relaunch, dubbed Destiny Infinity. While it wouldn’t have been a full-fledged sequel, the report indicates that it would have been closer in its release cadence to older Destiny and Destiny 2 expansions.

Interestingly, aside from its own recent commercial downturn, Destiny‘s demise was seemingly further helped along by Marathon not doing well right out of the gate. One source told the publication, “If [Marathon] made a billion dollars, would Destiny 2 have a chance to continue? Sure, maybe.”

It doesn’t look like players will have much say in Bungie potentially reprioritizing Destiny 2 either, with the report noting that “neither the petition nor the planned login surge on the 9th has any chance of reversing the decision or greenlighting Destiny 3.” As for now, Bungie is facing pressure to succeed with Marathon, and Season 2 will seemingly be a major part of this.

Bungie had announced earlier this month that June 9th will mark the release of Destiny 2‘s final content update. In a statement, the studio said that “it has become clear that after The Final Shape, we have reached the time of our shared worlds, and Destiny, to live beyond Destiny 2.” While active development on the shooter is coming to an end, Bungie has noted that its servers will continue to live on.

Interestingly, another report noted that, when Bungie made its announcement to stop supporting Destiny 2, many of the developers at the studio were also caught off guard. At the time, work was reportedly underway for a new expansion that was seemingly titled Shattered Cycle. Employees who already knew about the decision described themselves feeling isolated, and “begged” studio leadership to let the other developers know.

The last major expansion for Destiny 2 was Renegades, which was quite poorly received both critically and commercially. In our review, we gave it a score of 6 out of 10, noting that despite its intriguing use of Star Wars themes and references, the same aspects often felt overtly heavy-handed. The expansion also suffered from repetitive objectives in the Lawless Frontier missions, and its new faction being little more than a new set of vendors.

In a new blog post, it noted that Night Marsh is “built to be slower-paced than Day Marsh and plays more like a survival horror experience, with slightly fewer players and extra environmental challenges with navigating the darkness and threats within.”

The first and most obvious challenge is the lack of visibility. The new Flashlights, Vector Rounds, which leave pools of light on impact (and even illuminate enemies) and Vector Grenades for pinging nearby threats help in that regard. You also get Darksight scopes, which will briefly highlight the world when aiming down sights. It creates a real sense of tension, as you stop to survey your surroundings, keep moving, and repeat.

And if all that fails, Signal Flares are on hand. They’ll alert others to your location, but in terms of lighting up the sky, there are few better options.

Bungie has spoken quite a bit about increased security from the UESC, but what does that mean? Simply put, you’ll need to kill bots to obtain Certs, which can hack into Network Towers for the loot within. But they’re also used for activating exfiltration, so be careful not to let hubris and greed be your own demise.

As for those strange creatures that have seemingly been running around…well, if you’re feeling lucky, take those Certs to Complex Control’s upper floors, open the doors and find out first-hand. Survive, and you just might earn some “powerful loot.”

Of course, to ensure the player base isn’t split much between the new Duos queue and upcoming experimental PvE modes, Bungie will cycle the day and night versions of Dire Marsh every 90 minutes. The first week of the season, which is also when Marathon will be free to play across all platforms, will see both available round the clock. As for Contracts, keep an eye out for MIDA and Traxus – they may have some tasks that require braving the dark.

Marathon Season 2: NIGHTFALL kicks off on June 2nd. Stay tuned for more details and insights from the development team in the meantime.

It starts with what seems to be the new Runner Shell, the Sentinel, and their crew entering Night Marsh, the nighttime version of Dire Marsh. The UESC’s troops seem to be on much higher alert – a fact gleaned from what appear to be the flashbacks of previously downed Shells. Some appear to have been cornered by strange beings. Others are hunted and brutally murdered by other Runners.

It’s not long before the Sentinel is left alone in the present, firing at the shadows as unknown creatures scamper about. Suffice it to say that it doesn’t survive, though death seemingly hasn’t provided an escape either. Are players dealing with the mutated husks of former Shells? Or something else?

A full reveal is coming later this week and hopefully we’ll learn more about the Cradle, a gameplay system that grants more control over one’s Runner stats, and that new weapon that the Sentinel is wielding. Of course, Bungie has even more in store, including two new experimental PvE modes, more Vault Space, and so on. Head here for all the details.

Forbes’ Paul Tassi added to this with new details from his own sources. It seems the decision to stop supporting Destiny 2 was unknown to most of the studio until the actual announcement. As such, the team continued working on future content, including an alleged expansion called Shattered Cycle. Those who were knowledgeable about the decision reportedly felt isolated and “begged” the higher-ups to let more of the studio know about it.

Regarding the layoffs, a town hall meeting was apparently held that saw leadership questioned multiple times about the same. There was no answer, but despite being “significant,” they’re apparently not “immediately imminent,” per Tassi. In the meantime, you probably shouldn’t expect a Destiny 3 announcement any time soon.

Why didn’t it begin development immediately after The Final Shape? Because, as Schreier noted on Twitter, “The answer (as it usually is) is how much money it would take.” With how Sony’s live-service initiative has fared over the past several years, it’s understandably not going to make that investment any time soon.

This doesn’t mean Bungie is completely abandoning the IP, though – it’s apparently pitching other titles that use it without being a “full sequel.” What shape that will take remains to be seen, but as of now, Destiny, as fans know it, is effectively over.

Unfortunately, any hopes for Destiny 3 might be shelved for the time being. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier spoke to “people familiar with the studio’s plans” who claimed that the sequel isn’t planned for immediate production. Furthermore, it’s planning to lay off a “significant number” of employees. How many exactly remains unknown.

Right now, pitching new titles (including new entries in the Destiny franchise) is underway, but nothing has been greenlit. Schreier noted that Bungie is one of the “more expensive studios to operate,” both due to its Seattle location and its experienced staff. While you may think Sony would try to preserve as many as possible, it likely mandated the layoffs to counteract the studio’s hefty impairment losses.

And if it wasn’t obvious already, especially after the delay to Destiny 2’s Shadow and Order Update (which has since been renamed to Monument of Triumph), it seems some prior Destiny staff are now working on Marathon. Not that the extraction shooter has been doing huge numbers, but Sony is hopeful and committed to it. For now.