Marathon Eight Months On: Great Reviews, Small Crowds and a Change of Plan
Bungie's extraction shooter won 9s from major critics and still struggled to hold players. Here is how Marathon got here, what Season 2 changed and what Bungie promises for the rest of 2026.
In 1994, a small Chicago studio called Bungie released a science-fiction shooter for the Apple Macintosh. It was called Marathon, it was set aboard a colony ship near the star Tau Ceti, and it laid the groundwork for everything Bungie did next, including Halo. Thirty-two years later, Bungie brought the name back for a very different kind of game, and learned how hard the modern shooter market can be.
Marathon launched on March 5, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, with cross-play and cross-save, priced at $39.99 for the standard edition. Reviews were strong. Player numbers were not. And in September, Bungie said openly that the game had not met its expectations and that it would change direction.
A rocky road to launch
Marathon was revealed at Sony's PlayStation Showcase on May 24, 2023. Bungie showed gameplay on April 12, 2025 and set a September 23, 2025 release date, but a closed alpha that spring drew lukewarm reactions. In June 2025, Bungie delayed the game indefinitely.
The same period brought an embarrassing controversy. In May 2025, artist Fern Hook, known as Antireal, said Marathon had used her 2017 designs without permission. Bungie said a former artist had included them without the studio's knowledge and promised to make it right. In December 2025 she said the matter had been resolved to her satisfaction, and she is now credited on the game as a visual design consultant.
What kind of game it is
Marathon is an extraction shooter: you drop into a dangerous zone with a small team, fight other players and computer enemies for loot, and try to get out alive. Die before extracting and you lose what you carried. Runners live in biocybernetic "shells", each with its own abilities, chosen before every run. Rook, for example, is built for solo scavengers.
It does not require a PlayStation account on PC or Xbox, a lesson Sony appears to have taken from the Helldivers 2 account row in 2024.
Reviews: Bungie's gunplay still sings
Critics liked what they played. Marathon scored 81 on Metacritic for PC and PS5 and 83 for Xbox Series X|S. IGN and GameSpot both gave it 9/10, PC Gamer awarded 90, and Eurogamer gave it four stars out of five. On OpenCritic, 74% of critics recommended it.
The player problem
Strong reviews did not translate into a big audience. On Steam, Marathon peaked at just over 88,000 concurrent players at launch, a respectable number for a paid game but far below the giants of the genre.
Season 1 ended on June 1, and Season 2, Nightfall, began on June 2, 2026. It added a new zone, the Night Marsh, a new Sentinel shell, two weapons and The Cradle, a system for customising your stats. Bungie offered a free trial for the new season, extended to 10 days after server problems. During that free week, Steam players peaked at 40,686, before falling below 7,000.
In mid-July Bungie added Vault Breaker, a limited-time, roguelike mode for players who want to avoid other players altogether. At the time, the game was also on sale for $28.
Sony has not shared sales figures, but the pressure showed. In June 2026, Bungie laid off staff, mostly on the Destiny team but including some Marathon developers, as covered in our Bungie layoffs story.
What's next
In September 2026, Bungie said Marathon had not met its expectations and that it planned to broaden the game beyond pure extraction. It announced two updates for the rest of the year: a Nightfall Refresh in October and Symbiosis in December.
That is a remarkable admission for a studio of Bungie's size, and an honest one. Marathon's problem was never its shooting, which critics agree is among the best in the genre. It was asking players to pay for a demanding, high-loss game in a market full of free alternatives and one breakout paid rival, Embark's ARC Raiders, which we cover in our Embark Studios long read.
Why it matters
Marathon is now Bungie's only active game after Destiny 2's final update. If the December update can widen its appeal, Bungie has a future built around it. If you are curious, the discount and the more forgiving PvE options make late 2026 the cheapest, friendliest moment to try it.