Bungie's Marathon didn't get off to the best start, and players are now accusing Bungie of sabotaging the game with the way its Season 2 update has been handled so far. Visually excellent PvPvE extraction shooter, Marathon is sort of a sequel to Bungie's first ever release, the 1994 MacOS classic Marathonthough the franchise's move towards live service coverage was problematic to say the least.
While Fate 2 was the studio's flagship for the better part of the last decade, that balance changed in April 2026 when most of Bungie's veteran developers moved to Marathon. Fate 2 is now functionally complete, with all live services features completed and all future content cancelled, much to the chagrin of its player base. At the same time, Marathon has trouble maintaining its own healthy player base.
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Destiny 3 may still be possible, but Bungie's next chapter may depend on Marathon finding its footing after Destiny 2's final update arrives soon.
Bungie mishandles updates to Marathon's live service, players are unhappy
MarathonThe Season 2 update addressed many of the game's growing pains, but it didn't come off in a perfect way. One of its biggest issues, according to the community, is the fact that Cradle XP gains have been substantially reduced. The result is a big increase in the roughness of the game, and some players outright accuse Bungie of trying to “kill [their] The logic is that a massive increase on MarathonThe XP grind will only exacerbate the game's biggest problems and make it less likely to attract new players.
Although Marathon certainly received its fair share of blind hate, a point the community made is not necessarily a bad one. While Fate 2The latest update effectively breathed new life into the game to the point of crashing the servers, Marathon he has not received the same kind of injection since day one. Concurrent player counts have their problem as a metric for evaluating the health of a game, but Marathon12,000 daily peak players is nothing compared to Fate 2peak 115 thousand Deliberately improving the game is unlikely to have a positive effect in this regard.
Not even MarathonThe game's much-needed second free week has significantly increased the daily player count to the point where one can't help but wonder if the core concept just isn't appealing enough for the average gamer. Importantly, none of this speaks to the actual quality of the game: Marathon is a Bungie FPS through and through with sharp gameplay, stunning visuals and an existential horror story. However, its main gameplay loop is that of a PvPvE extraction shooter, and that may be what makes it less attractive than it should be.
What kind of weapon is that?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
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Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s) Medium (5.0s) Hard (2.5s) Permadeath (2.5s)
Bungie clearly doesn't want to sabotage their own bread and butter like this. Fate 2 it's done and there's no coming back, and Bungie is facing massive layoffs as part of its summer layoffs. It's not in the company's best interest to make its own games less interesting to the general public, and Cradle XP is probably just an example of the team making a tactical mistake at a very inopportune time. Fortunately, the changes were deployed fairly quickly Marathon's agile sandbox, so it's still possible for Bungie to steer the ship in the right direction.
- Released
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March 5, 2026
- ESRB
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Teen / Animated blood, language, violence, in-game purchases, user interaction
