Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

It's Grummz the Retard, so definite helping of the salt shaker and then some.

Still funny if true news though. Bungie's internal morale had to be in the fucking dumpster.

Knowing nothing about Grummz - my feed is cursed from my actively trying to fuck with the algorithm - the fact I couldn’t find fuck all else about it is why I prefaced that with a LOT of salt.

But if it’s actually somehow true? Then even making the most generous of assumptions (ie. console/PC being a 33/66 split in terms of player base), Marathon would still only be sitting at roughly $42M, assuming those are all full price purchases, not accounting for any MTX or whatever cut Steam takes. Which considering the financial black hole that Marathon’s development and the Bungie Acquisition has been, accounts to diddly fuck.

Some accountant at Sony is likely considering bathtub moonshine over the amount of money lost on the Live Service Gold Rush. Considering how all of the most successful Live Services not named Call of Duty or yearly Sportsball seemed to be lightning in a bottle titles, they’d probably have the same result if they just put the development budget of any of these games in a pile and light the pile on fire.

 

[Toxic BRAAAAP Mask]

Whenever they announce the number of layoffs I always get surprised at how many people work in a single project.

And yet for some reason they still have to out source work to jeets and gooks.

 

[Orkeosaurus]

I hope every asshole that takes everything out of a dead player's backpack and drops it all over the ground gets third partied while they're doing their little backpack game.

 

[StacticShock]

Bungie's internal morale had to be in the fucking dumpster.

good, fuck 'em.
they tell me to get fucked every time i boot D2 even if it's to run public events with the boys because i'm a free player, fuck 'em to death.

Knowing nothing about Grummz - my feed is cursed from my actively trying to fuck with the algorithm - the fact I couldn’t find fuck all else about it is why I prefaced that with a LOT of salt.

it's not just grummz though, there's a whole thread about these types of people even if the recent messages are about a gay slapfight between two retarded niggers in there.

[WIP] List of Gamergate / Anti-woke / "Based" Grifters​

 

[moocow]

Oh, this is one of those "source is labeled a 'grifter' ergo they must be lying" bullshit things, right? So people will argue with each other about the source while ignoring the news (despite it trickling from other sources, whether immediately or a day or two later, it somehow still won't "count" because it came from an unperson)?

Great way to stall active reporting of an actual event in the industry for awhile. They don't even have to spend money to do it. Just "leak" it to the "wrong" person to muddy the waters. Classic.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Marathon chads...this can't be real, right?

How could DEI do this.

The dipshits didn't realize they needed the Halo, Destiny AND extraction shooter audience to sustain Bungie.

To be fair it's completely unreasonable to expect a studio with a mere 800 staff could achieve this.

What many Gamers™ seem to forget is that Marathon was always just a diminutive of the games full name, which is actually:

'Marathon Is Speedrunning The shuttering of Bungie while robbing Sony of 3.6 billion dollars with nothing to show for'.

The real Marathon was the years-long con Pete Parsons ran to milk Sony for as many classic cars as he could. Sorry Sony Sisters, no refunds!

 

[creaturestorm]

Bungie is going to get gutted I wouldn't count on ever seeing an S3.

400 being fired? IDK how many bungie has but I'd double that. IF they dont straight up close the studio and repurpose anyone they think is of value.

I still think a S3 is happening, we haven't gotten the rushed and poorly thought out PvE mode yet. I believe.

They have 800 staff and they just killed development on D2. Of course they are going to get rid of half of them. Honestly they should fire like 90% of their staff, half is not enough. Do they really need 400 people working on Marathon? The results say no.


Also they’ve like quadrupled down on the loot nerfs because a bunch of streamers cried about how it ‘ruined the economy’. So the game is back to having no loot on the maps.

Heaven fucking forbid normal people to experience the content with out having to grind hundreds of hours and play the most meta comps with pro players.

99.9% of anyone whose every played marathon have never played with a gold kit load out. Nobody knows what a gold bully or a gold Mizzy looks and feels like. It’s just a bunch of shit geared people feeding people who play this shit for a living.

 

[dame dudi jench]

I want to preface this with the fact I can’t find any sources beyond the Xeet AND that we all know PC is the lions share of Marathon’s player base, but if it’s at all true then that’s likely damning for Bungie.

It's Grummz the Retard, so definite helping of the salt shaker and then some.

But if it’s actually somehow true? Then even making the most generous of assumptions (ie. console/PC being a 33/66 split in terms of player base), Marathon would still only be sitting at roughly $42M, assuming those are all full price purchases, not accounting for any MTX or whatever cut Steam takes. Which considering the financial black hole that Marathon’s development and the Bungie Acquisition has been, accounts to diddly fuck.

---

This is news from 2 months ago gentlemen, we already knew Marathon sold 1.2 million copies, ~340,000 of which were on console. $14,000,000/340,000= ~$41, it's just the revenue math on the existing sales numbers we knew rounded up from $13.6 million. I question that math b/c it's assuming everyone paid $40 - is there no region pricing for consoles? i got a credit card in latam credit card to open a steam account and only paid $27 for the game. https://www.gameshub.com/news/artic...te-1-2-million-copies-steam-ps5-2026-2862962/

what's funny is the continued copium from people who either looked at server slam numbers and didn't realize the drop-off once the game was sold or are just delulu. discourse continues to be insane - i like this thread because it shows how little anyone there understands about how saas and hardware companies work. https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1u8z2id/new_info_per_paul_tassi_regarding_layoffs_at/ some guy whose experience with executive management was meeting a regional sales manager at gamestop when he was an assistant store manager or something, explaining that executives are highly rational dispassionate decision-makers (spoiler most execs are toddlers, the japanese ones are just differently stupid)

 

[p1138]

This is news from 2 months ago gentlemen, we already knew Marathon sold 1.2 million copies, ~340,000 of which were on console. $14,000,000/340,000= ~$41, it's just the revenue math on the existing sales numbers we knew. I question that math b/c it's assuming everyone paid $40 - is there no region pricing for consoles? i got a credit card in latam credit card to open a steam account and only paid $27 for the game. https://www.gameshub.com/news/artic...te-1-2-million-copies-steam-ps5-2026-2862962/

Hell, even if it sold 2.2 million copies according to that screenshot from steam(and it says players, not copies there is a difference) that's still only $88 million dollars, and with the player count drop off occurring so quickly there's no chance that they'll somehow magically double that over the course of the rest of the year. And yes at least on Steam Marathon has regional pricing, so no chance it even made the 88 million assuming that was actual copies sold and not just "players" that publishers like to publish numbers for when their sales figures are actually shit.

https://steamdb.info/app/3065800/

Even if the game only cost 200 million to make, that's still a massive loss and would align with why Sony wrote down the value of the Bungie acquisition. The entire problem with the "AAA" game industry at this point is that it's a bloated mess, and the games need to sell millions of copies, or just be a failure. At this point even at 100 million for the budget, it would still be a loss with regional pricing factored in and again still assuming that 2.2 million players actually equates to sales.

And then of course there's Steam and Microsoft taking their cuts as well for their customers. Steam at 30 million after their cut, and I believe Microsoft does the same so just cut it in half to 15 million. The sycophants fail to grasp basic math, and even just using reasonable assumptions about the budget for a game that apparently required 2,700 people to make, and at a glance an additional 25 studios beyond just Bungie to make the damned thing.

These damned publishers keep wanting to gamble to find the next big billion dollar game, while failing to just make games that could be a success and that people would consider good and actually sell well enough to at least break even.

 

[dame dudi jench]

Even if the game only cost 200 million to make, that's still a massive loss and would align with why Sony wrote down the value of the Bungie acquisition. The entire problem with the "AAA" game industry at this point is that it's a bloated mess, and the games need to sell millions of copies, or just be a failure. At this point even at 100 million for the budget, it would still be a loss with regional pricing factored in and again still assuming that 2.2 million players actually equates to sales.

totally, none of the copium around sales numbers matters b/c even the copium numbers mean sony is losing money keeping the game open. just funny to watch people get this deep into cognitive dissonance over a megacorp's sales numbers

 

[p1138]

totally, none of the copium around sales numbers matters b/c even the copium numbers mean sony is losing money keeping the game open. just funny to watch people get this deep into cognitive dissonance over a megacorp's sales numbers

Yeah, even selling skins there's just no way the existing playerbase is large enough to be buying enough skins to make up for the awful sales numbers. But even if they could...

You would need the supposed 2.2 million players that all bought the game at North American MSRP, to have bought another $60 in skins or other in game purchases to bring that number up to 220 million. But... even the shitty in-game currency(1120 per skin and 1100 in the pack? ffs that's not even trying to hide what they're doing) is still subject to Steam and Microsoft taking their 30% cut for in-game currency bought using their platforms.

These people are not going to be increasing their total spend on this game to $130-140(and they'd all need to do this to hit a break even on a 200 million dollar budget, before marketing) over the course of a year, especially since they lost 85% of their playerbase within the first 3 months anyway, most of whom probably didn't throw an additional dime at the game after their initial purchase since they quit playing in the first month.

 

[dame dudi jench]

Yeah, even selling skins there's just no way the existing playerbase is large enough to be buying enough skins to make up for the awful sales numbers. But even if they could...

Yeah i did the math up thread. You'd need every active player to be dropping between 200-500 a year on skins, depending on your player count estimate. Another case of what you pointed out where even the best case copium estimate is true Bungie is still toast. Even if you assume 400k active players you will have to sell $200 in mtx to every single of them. At that point the details don't matter they fucked.

 

[creaturestorm]

Yeah i did the math up thread. You'd need every active player to be dropping between 200-500 a year on skins, depending on your player count estimate. Another case of what you pointed out where even the best case copium estimate is true Bungie is still toast. Even if you assume 400k active players you will have to sell $200 in mtx to every single of them. At that point the details don't matter they fucked.

This really isn’t that unreasonable, it’s just not possible with the current way things are going. Look at a game like WoW where every player pays about 200 bucks a year in subscription fees, before the spend $100 here or there for a dinosaur mount or some cosmetics with a icy flame enchant.

The game just wasn’t built to be exploited in this way. The game just isn’t fully realized in any capacity.

It has all these elements of many successful games, it’s going in all these directions, but it never really goes anywhere with itself. What you can buy now is pathetic, but most people still playing have bought cosmetics.

They just dont know how to make a game that people want to play and they don’t know how to properly exploit them.

 

[dame dudi jench]

Look at a game like WoW where every player pays about 200 bucks a year in subscription fees, before the spend $100 here or there for a dinosaur mount or some cosmetics with an icy flame enchant.

Yeah our only hope for a good fun live service game is for a new game to succeed charging in a flat monthly fee to support development instead of predatory mtx models that incentivize bad game design choices. Consumers' unwillingness to pay subscription fees has lead to worse more predatory pricing models and worse game design.

 

[creaturestorm]

Yeah our only hope for a good fun live service game is for a new game to succeed charging in a flat monthly fee to support development instead of predatory mtx models that incentivize bad game design choices. Consumers' unwillingness to pay subscription fees has lead to worse more predatory pricing models.

You really have to have a finished game first and foremost.

I think you could go the hell divers route as well. Charge 20 bucks for a progression path that unlocks new skins, new runner, cradle stats, and maybe a couple of new weapons. Then charge for other cosmetics through an in game store.

The problem is this doesn’t mesh well with their brutal streamer e sport vision for the game. They thought this was going to be a twitch darling and all the simps would buy it. The opposite happened.

 

[Birthday Cat]

Yeah our only hope for a good fun live service game is for a new game to succeed charging in a flat monthly fee to support development instead of predatory mtx models that incentivize bad game design choices. Consumers' unwillingness to pay subscription fees has lead to worse more predatory pricing models.

it's not about consumers, if they can charge subscriptions AND mtx systems, the more predatory the better, and present a less and less quality product, they will, gladly, and they likely give zero shits about protecting payment info so you have to watch billing like a hawk. even children's toys have turned into gachas.

beyond that, anybody that decided to shutter destiny, and hedge their bets not only on a old ip nobody knows besides "early bungie title" but an extraction shooter, deserves to have their company and product fail in a just world where other business blow up just because they over extended

 

[creaturestorm]

anybody that decided to shutter destiny, and hedge their bets not only on a old ip nobody knows besides "early bungie title" but an extraction shooter,

D2 is a decade old. Imagine destiny 2 with its dated ass graphics on the PS6. Its just not a path forward.

Killing Destiny was a mistake, but it’s not the golden goose people are making it out to be. It was preforming just as well as marathon before the last farewell to the game. People have moved on, Bungie needed to move on, but not at all like this.

 

[moocow]

it's not about consumers, if they can charge subscriptions AND mtx systems, the more predatory the better, and present a less and less quality product, they will, gladly, and they likely give zero shits about protecting payment info so you have to watch billing like a hawk. even children's toys have turned into gachas.

They are repeatedly, comprehensively, and very effectively proving they cannot do this, time and again. It does not work (at least, not under their guidance).

Of course, they're also ignoring the fact that even Fortnite, the great-granddaddy of Live Service Action Shooter Mayhem™ is falling off too. Obviously it still prints money more than the federal reserve does, but not as much as it did at its peak. Even when they catch lightning in a bottle, it doesn't last forever. And that's rare in itself.

But by god they're gonna keep fucking trying it until they make it or go broke! I know which outcome I'm betting on though. Sony and Bungie don't have the chops.

 

[King Dead]

D2 is a decade old. Imagine destiny 2 with its dated ass graphics on the PS6. Its just not a path forward.

Killing Destiny was a mistake, but it’s not the golden goose people are making it out to be. It was preforming just as well as marathon before the last farewell to the game. People have moved on, Bungie needed to move on, but not at all like this.

The big difference is that Destiny had over a decade to reach that point, and for most of that time it still maintained a healthy population. Maybe not to the numbers Bungie would have liked, but well enough. It only got really bad in the past year or so thanks to a bunch of retarded development decisions all at once, coming off the heels of a lot of players feeling like they'd reached the conclusion with the previous expansion. If anything, the response to the EoL update shows that the audience is still there and would likely come back if there was a concentrated effort to actually deliver something they want without falling into the same pitfalls as before (no vaulting content people paid for, not feeling the need to reinvent the wheel every couple of months, etc.). And no, I'm not naive enough to believe that will happen, as much as I'd like it to. Destiny has always been an expensive game to develop, and it's questionable if a new release would even manage to sell well enough to justify the budget required for it, to say nothing of support afterward.

Marathon has never had that luxury. It launched weak and cratered afterward. Outside of the core audience of blast havers, there doesn't really seem to be a market for it, at least not one that would justify the nine-figure price tag to make it. That's why people find it insane that the move has been to kill a game that at least has a track record of selling well in favor of the one that may never recoup its development costs. Of course, people also find it insane that they spent so much on a game in such a niche genre, but what's done is done.

And honestly, nothing against you for enjoying it, or for being frustrated that the devs are fucking around with what you enjoy to try and get that wider audience they need to survive. Lord knows I've been there myself more than once over the past decade-plus.

 

[Oliver Onions]

I question that math b/c it's assuming everyone paid $40 - is there no region pricing for consoles? i got a credit card in latam credit card to open a steam account and only paid $27 for the game.

I like to think of myself as not completely retarded and I wouldn't go to these lengths to save a few bucks, so I'm gonna guess the majority of blast-havers paid full price.

D2 is a decade old. Imagine destiny 2 with its dated ass graphics on the PS6. Its just not a path forward.

I don't really have any issue with how Destiny 2 looks, it's perfectly functional for what the game is. I'd rather play something that looks 3 generations old and has a ton of great content than the shiniest schlock UE6 can muster targeting max 30fps.