Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[King Dead]

Marathon is sitting at #43 despite currently being free to play on Steam, eclipsed by Arc Raiders (2025), Destiny 2 (2019), Rainbow Six Seige (2015), PayDay 2 (2013), and even 17 year old Left 4 Dead 2 (2009) for some reason.

Pretty embarrassing a 3 month old AAA game from one of the most beloved game studios can't even crack the top 25 when they are outright giving people a fully functional free demo. I am going to double down and say yeah this is a bad game.

The player count is, in my opinion, more of a function of the limited appeal of extraction shooters than of Marathon's design specifically. It has always been a niche genre because most people don't like the idea of risking the stuff they've collected and potentially losing everything, especially when (whether true or not) it can be rationalized as being entirely out of your control. This makes it all the more baffling that Bungie decided to stake their entire studio on its success when a small dedicated fanbase is about the best they could have hoped for. It's unlikely to grow meaningfully over the next few months, even if they keep doing a bunch of F2P events to drum up interest, or make the entire game F2P. Most people who wanted to give it a whirl have already done so, and barring any major changes to the formula or massive content drops, most of them are unlikely to want to take another look in the future.

People that enjoy it seem to really like it, but that was always going to be a small group of people. Is it a bad game because of that? Not necessarily, there are plenty of games that have small fanbases. What it really is, is that it's not good enough for Bungie in their current situation, and certainly not good enough to have blown a hefty nine figures on, on top of killing off their only other project in the process (I know, they didn't literally pull the plug on Destiny, but EoL means it's as good as dead in the long term). Just one really stupid decision after another.

 

[dltzk]

Without a solid understanding of the topic, it's difficult to evaluate how much weight an opinion should carry.


But he throws frost grenades instead of poison grenades!!!!

I think half the new shit in night marsh was a last second knee jerk reaction to people demanding more pve.

I would rather this game die tonight than go free to play. I've had enough of these grey geared sponsor kit retards shitting up my runs. It's fucking miserable.

Yeah the crew fill has been horrible, all of the players I've had on crew fill literally don't know what to do on the map. They don't even loot POIs! I had one retard bring in a purple kit on outpost and he completely threw the run, he ended at 0 player damage somehow. Genuinely pissed me off.

 

[creaturestorm]

Yeah the crew fill has been horrible, all of the players I've had on crew fill literally don't know what to do on the map. They don't even loot POIs! I had one retard bring in a purple kit on outpost and he completely threw the run, he ended at 0 player damage somehow. Genuinely pissed me off.

I'm half way through progression and I'm still matching with people you describe. I'm lvl 50+ with a lvl 50+ cradle. Still I get these grey kits that immediately run in opposite directions to the two nearest enemy spawn, never do they loot our spawn. It's misery.

I had a run where one players said over comms "this isn't out post.... I guess we just leave raid and requeue.", they then both disconnected. Fuck me and my kit i guess.

On the upside I really am liking the new lore, with the exception of the colony trying to memory hole the Phor attack, It's just not believable.

 

[Slimy Time]

UPDATE:
Ver archivo adjunto 9107650
The kind and generous overlords at Sony have decided to give everyone who bought it a copy of the game along with their in game trinkets.
E:
BUT GOING FORWARD they won't do this anymore.
Holy fuck, how low can you get Sony?

This was absolutely a jeet coded scam attempt there. Deluxe has, for years now meant full game + extra bits, usually things you can’t get or special skins without it. Either they are that incompetent or maliciously trying to rake money before they got called on it.

 

[moocow]

This was absolutely a jeet coded scam attempt there. Deluxe has, for years now meant full game + extra bits, usually things you can’t get or special skins without it. Either they are that incompetent or maliciously trying to rake money before they got called on it.

This isn't even the first time a publisher has pulled shit like this.

• Dragon Age: The Veilguard's (Rook's Coffer edition, $150)
• Borderlands 4 (ECHO-4 Bundle, $150)
• Diablo IV (Limited Collector's Box, $100)

None of these editions included the game, in either physical or digital download form. This was not an accident. Fuck these companies so hard for this bullshit. Fuck everybody else making excuses for the fuckers, too. They're ripping people off and they're competing with each other over who can suck Sony's girl-cock while apologizing for them fastest.

 

[Oliver Onions]

I know gamedev degrees are already considered pretty low value but I think the floor is about to fall out on any perceived value of that in the future.

I've never understood why anyone would specifically get a game dev degree instead of a software engineering one that massively broadens your options for work.

There's a ton of good games and talented developers outside of AAA space.

Whenever I see another AAA vanity project crumble under the weight of its own hubris I'm reminded how Hollow Knight was made by 3 people for $40k.

This isn't even the first time a publisher has pulled shit like this.

Mass Effect: Andromeda did this as well because I remember Jim Sterling complaining about it. The publishers excuse was it was a way for fans to get all the CE content without buying the game again, but my question was so why not just sell the CE content individually? I only ever want the artbooks, fuck the gay statues and bottle openers.

In this instance though they specifically listed the game as part of the deluxe edition, so whether it was a scam or genuine error because of jeetcoding they were asking to be gaped if they didn't either refund everyone or do what they did and give them the game for free.

 

[Pod 042]

Bungie used their Destiny money to incubate a few new projects. The most promising one—Project Gummy Bears—was forcibly taken over by Sony, and spun off on to its own brand new studio.

Sadly, based on what I remember and what we know now, I think I know what happened to project 'gummybear'. 'Gummybear' was not supposed to be a separate IP, it was a third person shooter/rpg set in the Destiny universe and described as almost a cross between Destiny and Monster Hunter. Ideally it was to be a bridge between hardcore and casual audiences and create some buzz between D2-D3. It's been years after being yanked from Bungie with no updates but I believe it was repurposed into "Horizon Hunters Gathering". Very little was ever shared about the project but the two games seem to share a lot of elements that were divulged. Also also, knowing Bungie was a consultant on the game makes it a little more likely. Call it a hunch or a conspiracy, but I'm almost certain that's what the ultimate fate of project 'gummybear' is/was.

Deluxe has, for years now meant full game + extra bits

That's what it has been but they have been trying to actively subvert the idea for years. The industry started offering the deluxe edition "upgrades" back in like 2015 alongside the full price deluxe edition. So you have a cluttered store that looks like:
>Standard 59.99
>Premium 69.99
>Deluxe 89.99
>Collectors (no game) 129.99
>Digital art book 5.99
>Digital OST 14.99
>Deluxe "upgrade" 19.99
It's supposed to be a option for people on the fence, who buy the standard edition, to upgrade later and only have to pay a little more. But, It doesn't actually serve a real purpose other than just confusing people into buying something on accident most of the time as most people who want the deluxe edition will buy it immediately. Makes me excited for Tuesday, just to see how many confusing purchase options Bungie's sales team chucks into digital stores. Especially after promising explicitly to not do that.

 

[evilsponge]

On the upside I really am liking the new lore, with the exception of the colony trying to memory hole the Phor attack, It's just not believable.

Ver archivo adjunto 9111295

Speaking of lore enjoying whoever did the audio logs for Darius really outdid themselves and I'm glad you get to hear more of his schizo babble on Night Marsh

 

[Jace on ice]

My even more schizo theory is the real reason Sony is on this desperate live service push is because none of their recent single player games have made their money back, or made so little they may as well not have bothered.

GaaS is a gamble, but spending hundreds of millions on single player games with one upfront payment and no recurring monetization is suicide, especially when most of your output is glorified interactive movies.

This seems to be the trend now. Wildguard tried to pull the same shit in the Highguard reveal trailer with 'from the makers of Apex Legends' and it was like 2 guys who'd worked at Respawn.

If I remember correctly they actually removed any mention of Apex from the Steam description after the game instantly bombed on release.

You're dramatically overthinking it. The reason everyone is obsessed with live service is because Fortnite a cheap simple shooter with cartoon graphics made a trillion dollars with an initial investment of tree fiddy and a frozen burrito.

Everyone wants that to happen to their product despite Fortnite being a once in a generation freak accident type thing.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

You're dramatically overthinking it. The reason everyone is obsessed with live service is because Fortnite a cheap simple shooter with cartoon graphics made a trillion dollars with an initial investment of tree fiddy and a frozen burrito.

Everyone wants that to happen to their product despite Fortnite being a once in a generation freak accident type thing.

Emphasis mine. Fortnite, when it caught lightning in a bottle, likely had nowhere near the budget - any estimates I can find are in the $50M-$100M range, which while still a shocking amount of money is nowhere near what Sony has burned chasing the dragon on ONE of these failures. Sure, ongoing development has likely pushed the budget well beyond that, but when you have a license to print money like Fortnite had at its peak, who gives a shit.

ESPECIALLY when you remember the BR that made them big was essentially a throwaway game mode they made to keep people busy while they worked on "Save The World", likely only made because PUBG was the big thing at the time if I remember right. There's no amount of money you can throw at this without that kind of once in a generation level of dumb fucking luck.

 

[Oliver Onions]

You're dramatically overthinking it. The reason everyone is obsessed with live service is because Fortnite a cheap simple shooter with cartoon graphics made a trillion dollars with an initial investment of tree fiddy and a frozen burrito.

Everyone wants that to happen to their product despite Fortnite being a once in a generation freak accident type thing.

I know that, but most companies tried once and when their offering failed they moved on. If rumours are to be believed Sony had up to a dozen live service games in production simultaneously that have since been whittled down to 3 either due to flops or cancellations. They have burned billions on this pursuit and so far enjoyed zero return on investment, but they're still going.

That (to me) suggests a level of desperation which goes beyond 'we would also like a money printer, pls'.

 

[StacticShock]

I know that, but most companies tried once and when their offering failed they moved on. If rumours are to be believed Sony had up to a dozen live service games in production simultaneously that have since been whittled down to 3 either due to flops or cancellations. They have burned billions on this pursuit and so far enjoyed zero return on investment, but they're still going.
That (to me) suggests a level of desperation which goes beyond 'we would also like a money printer, pls'.

to be honest this isn't new, a out of touch company trying to chase a dead dragon because they are too big and structured that they can't make swift changes isn't new.
like the current mindset of niggercattle is PvE COOP, PvP Sweatfest is basically dust by now, so much so even attempting to do PvPvE ends up in fuckery when it was tolerated a couple of years ago when pvp sweatfest was still alive.

if anything i'm more impressed it's not EA being this massively retarded, they seem oddly chill especially with how BF6 is doing alright, chinkcent is a player to be on the watch but that's a whole different thing with how chyna is worming their way into the western market in many fronts, nintendo is going full retard because of palworld and their losing grasp of cuckrights reality but that's a localized cage fight so it doesn't really ripple to the west outside material to laugh about and embracer or whatever the fuck name is on the mask now just became this weird blob of game studio corpses and ip's they could find on the bargain bin that wasn't bought by the big players then there's xbox is poking their bloated belly considering seppuku because of their loss of izzat, it seems the retard totem is on the hands of sony.

i'd say enjoy the trashfires until shit corrects itself, probably after GTA IV, because TES 6 is, well, on a potential fuck-up route because xbox/microsoft are doing a couple of things with the branching out with the fallout show but they haven't taken the antibiotics to get rid of the fecal bacteria that infected them, so... i mean the infection is literally spreading if you look at the "newest" xbox head chief...

 

[creaturestorm]

likely only made because PUBG was the big thing at the time if I remember right.

First and only game of fortnite I ever played was because of pubg and wanting to see what they had cooked up. Had no idea what fortnite even was besides a BR.

I shot some guy with a sniper rifle and it didn't kill him and before my very eyes he instantly built some giant tower and started spraying me down with machine gun fire. Absolutely filtered.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Are you talking about Destiny fans getting fucked previously? There is no RMT in this game for items.

WHAT?

Holy fuck - I'm not sure if I should applaud them or laugh, that's like the whole reason to have a live service shooter and where all of the Apex/Fortnite money comes in from.

Oh my god how the fuck did that decision get past the design phase?

This was absolutely a jeet coded scam attempt there. Deluxe has, for years now meant full game + extra bits, usually things you can’t get or special skins without it. Either they are that incompetent or maliciously trying to rake money before they got called on it.

It's not a scam (per se) but it's a very simple logic thing that storefronts do.

Deluxe Edition - $59.99
Regular Edition - $39.99
Deluxe Edition Update - $20

If the store detects that you already own the game, it will not let you re-buy the it via the deluxe edition so it instead treats it as a Deluxe Edition Upgrade. It somehow was detecting Free weekend players as game owners and acting accordingly.

No idea why Marathon didn't put the free weekend in a demo container (which is why most game demos are a separate install) but more raw incompetence on display from Sony. I guess they didn't want to use the word "demo" for the "full game"?

 

[StacticShock]

It's not a scam (per se) but it's a very simple logic thing that storefronts do.
Deluxe Edition - $59.99
Regular Edition - $39.99
Deluxe Edition Update - $20
If the store detects that you already own the game, it will not let you re-buy the it via the deluxe edition so it instead treats it as a Deluxe Edition Upgrade. It somehow was detecting Free weekend players as game owners and acting accordingly.
No idea why Marathon didn't put the free weekend in a demo container (which is why most game demos are a separate install) but more raw incompetence on display from Sony. I guess they didn't want to use the word "demo" for the "full game"?

free weekend basically means you own the standard version of the game for a while in steam, if the PSN integration is shit, blame the jeets since shit is their expertise.

 

[The Ugly One]

Back in the day the ONLY People who could release a commercial video game project were big companies, the digital age has eradicated this weakpoint, it doesn't matter if Bungie, Sony or whoever the fuck stops making games, they haven't been making good games for years, for some over a decade.

Commander Keen was just made by some nerds.

 

[Defensive Ella Purnell]

First and only game of fortnite I ever played was because of pubg and wanting to see what they had cooked up. Had no idea what fortnite even was besides a BR.

I shot some guy with a sniper rifle and it didn't kill him and before my very eyes he instantly built some giant tower and started spraying me down with machine gun fire. Absolutely filtered.

I swear to God I had the exact same fucking experience lmao

 

[Slimy Time]

This isn't even the first time a publisher has pulled shit like this.

• Dragon Age: The Veilguard's (Rook's Coffer edition, $150)
• Borderlands 4 (ECHO-4 Bundle, $150)
• Diablo IV (Limited Collector's Box, $100)

None of these editions included the game, in either physical or digital download form. This was not an accident. Fuck these companies so hard for this bullshit. Fuck everybody else making excuses for the fuckers, too. They're ripping people off and they're competing with each other over who can suck Sony's girl-cock while apologizing for them fastest.

Am I glad I don’t buy these modern games with all these weird packages. Sickening practice.

 

[moocow]

It's not a scam (per se) but it's a very simple logic thing that storefronts do.

No other storefront makes this mistake. A "free playable version of the full product wot you don't technically own and wot we'll be revoking shortly" is called a "demo," e.g. is a separate product SKU.

Steam, for instance, doesn't even let you bundle "temporarily free" products into bundles in a way that the "free" portion can be revoked from the buyer post-sale without manual review. In fact "free to play" promotions of normally-not-free products must be coordinated directly with Steam and are subject to approval (and advance planning/notice). They're also restricted to once or twice a year.

It is technically possible to arrange that on Steam, but they push back against it and steer publishers towards the "free to play weekend with a separate, sale-priced premium bundle" approach instead. I got lazy and pestered Grok to go dig up instances of the shitty version of this (i.e. what Sony did here) happening on Steam and it couldn't find any:

The risky bundle scenario can technically happen and the mechanics support it, but publishers generally structure these promotions more carefully (with discounts on permanent versions) so it doesn’t blow up into a major customer service issue. The “pure temporary base game + expensive paid DLC with no safety net” version is uncommon in real promotions.

This was absolutely intentional and 100% jeet-coded.

 

[Oliver Onions]

i'd say enjoy the trashfires until shit corrects itself,

That is exactly what I am doing. I'd definitely be a lot more upset if there was anything left at Sony I care about, but since we're probably never getting an Astro Bot sequel I'm quite content to work through my PS4 backlog while Rome burns.

No other storefront makes this mistake.

Sony are as retarded as Nintendo when it comes to UX stuff, it's just less easily noticed because Nintendo has a habit of advertising their backwards bullshit as if it's incredible innovation, like when they invented the Discord call for the Switch.

They definitely do scam people --like how you could backup your saves to USB on PS3/4, but for (((some reason))) PS5 saves can only be backed up to the cloud, which you have to pay for and can only have one backup-- but there are also times when they just fuck things up because they're too busy chasing the live service dragon to address the 2 decades of technical debt they've built up across 3 consoles.