Bungie wanted to establish a large, new brand with Marathon and revive the dusty franchise from the 90s. Meanwhile, the release is only 4 months away and raises concerns – about Marathon, but also about the future of Bungie. Let’s take a look at the developer of Destiny.
What’s going on with Marathon and Bungie?
- The first announcement trailer in May 2023 piqued the interest of many players and was viewed a strong 22 million times.
- After that, there was a long silence before new information and 2025 first gameplay about the game followed.
- In the meantime, players have been able to test the shooter in an alpha version themselves. However, the test did not convince many players.
- After the alpha test, there was a scandal involving stolen designs.
Marathon has no chance of being “successful”
Forbes journalist Paul Tassi revealed that he heard Marathon would need to be one of the 5 best-selling games of 2025 in the US to be considered a “success” (via YouTube). Tassi is well-connected with Bungie and claims to have some friends in the studio.
Tassi’s report prompted me to take a closer look at the game releases of the year and question whether this goal by Bungie seems realistic in my opinion. My clear conclusion:
A top 5 placement in 2025 seems impossible to me.
It’s only May, and there are already some really good games:
- GOTY candidates: Split Fiction, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
- Noteworthy mentions: Doom: The Dark Ages, Elden Ring: Nightreign, The First Berserker: Khazan.
- Upcoming releases: Dune: Awakening, Rematch, Mafia: The Old Country, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Borderlands 4, Dying Light: The Beast, FBC Firebreak, Judas, and Death Stranding 2.
Given the selection of games that have already been released and are set to release in 2025, I would be surprised if Marathon makes it into the top 15. I trust that each of these games will have better sales throughout the year than Marathon.
Because the entire game concept of Marathon is inconsistent.
Marathon has a tiny target audience that is further limited
The fundamental problem with Marathon starts with the actual game principle. It is an extraction shooter, the current hype genre of the gaming industry. Almost every developer wants to make an extraction shooter. The games all rely on the same core gameplay and only change minor details that are supposed to give each title its identity. In one game, it’s raging forces of nature; in another, playable heroes instead of unnamed characters.
The problem with all of this is: There are only 2 extraction shooters that have been really successful for years, Escape from Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown. New games that have attempted to imitate the genre have failed. This includes games and modes like The Cycle: Frontier and Call of Duty’s DMZ. Some games like Gray Zone Warfare or Delta Force may have a few thousand players on Steam, but they are still far from a top 5 spot in annual sales.
However, this is not just a problem for Bungie and Marathon; it is a phenomenon that keeps emerging in the gaming industry. Over the years, we have seen many different MOBAs that wanted to capitalize on the success of League of Legends and DOTA 2. Positively noteworthy are titles like Smite, Pokémon Unite, or Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. Other games have failed, including Paragon, Heroes of the Storm, and Battleborn.
Ultimately, many players often stick with the games they have been playing for years.
A casual game without casual gamers
Extraction shooters are a niche genre, and just because Tarkov is popular, it doesn’t mean that other studios will succeed with it as well. Developers are fighting over a small target audience and do not understand why players choose a particular game.
I am convinced that a casual extraction shooter like Marathon cannot work. If someone is playing Escape from Tarkov, they want the hardcore experience of a military simulation:
- no minimap
- a realistic game feel and setting
- complicated injuries of the character.
Players love how complicated the game is. It is no coincidence that a Tarkov streamer once said: “You can either study law or be good at Tarkov. Both at the same time is not possible.” I would recommend a Tarkov fan play ARMA or Squad before Marathon.
On the other side, there are gamer dads who want to relax after a hard workday. Relaxing gameplay is simply difficult in an extraction shooter. Even if I have really successful runs for 4-5 days, I will eventually die and lose my equipment. And as a non-competitive gamer, you often die until all your equipment is gone, and you can only use the cheapest weapons that the merchants sponsor for free. Either that, or you generally only use “bad” equipment because you fear losing your good loot.
Extraction shooters are just too punishing for casual gameplay. So, there are likely very few players who want to play a casual extraction shooter. Marathon effectively narrows an already very limited target audience.
Too high a price, no clear unique selling point
One of the most discussed problems with Marathon is also the price.
Marathon will not be a free-to-play game.
According to various rumors, it could cost around €40 at launch. If I am unsure whether Marathon will be fun for me or not, the price heavily pushes the purchase decision towards “no purchase” in the worst case.
Overall, the game lacks a major unique selling point. Something that tells the player: Here you get something special that you won’t find anywhere else.
The “innovative” idea of the game is to combine extraction shooters with playable heroes, but the typical extraction gameplay remains, only now everyone can use different abilities. However, these abilities like invisibility or enemy scanning are not new ideas and have already existed in one form or another in other games.
What has distinguished Marathon for many users on social networks so far has been the art style (cf. X). It is unique and stands out. However, since Bungie has admitted to stealing designs from an artist and using them in the alpha of Marathon, many designs in the game now need to be replaced. The art style will likely remain the same, but the incident casts a negative light on the game’s design.
Bungie has long lost the players
The tragic aspect of Bungie’s and Marathon’s situation is that the studio has been known for years for making really good shooters. The gunplay in Destiny is still considered excellent and is simply fun. However, that very community, the players of Destiny and fans of Bungie, has been lost to the studio months ago. There is a long list of criticisms that players repeatedly raise.
- Monetization: Expensive skins; various currencies; costly DLCs;
- Recycled content: New content like events are often just recycled versions of old content, events, and similar things repeat, and there are few new ideas and innovations
- Seasons, content vault, and fomo: The season model of Destiny 2 often results in content being available only for a limited time. Old DLC content that players paid for is disappearing into the content vault and is never playable again – unless they are recycled in the form of “new” content.
- Dealing with feedback: Many players have previously expressed that community feedback has not been heeded, for example, in balancing decisions.
- Neglect of PvP / Gambit: The PvP players of the loot shooter feel neglected.
The community’s dissatisfaction leads to a decline in player numbers; these are steadily decreasing. New content has recently brought only a small fraction of the player base according to player numbers on Steam. While Destiny 2 had an average of around 65,000 players on Steam in 2023, there were only about 48,000 in 2024 despite the release of The Final Shape. Since then, the numbers have continued to fall. In the first 4 months of 2025, there are on average only 28,130 players online (via SteamCharts).
In addition, there is heavy criticism outside the gameplay, such as for the layoff of over 450 employees at Bungie and how “insensitive” this was handled, the overall studio atmosphere, and toxic working conditions, all circumstances reported by former employees such as Liana Rupert.
Moreover, gamers notice that Bungie has recently been involved in multiple plagiarism allegations and has repeatedly admitted to them. This raises doubts about the company’s quality assurance. Bungie needs to create (or improve) an institution responsible for checking the copyright of designs, texts, and other content – at least if one has repeatedly appeared in that field.
| Year | Game/ Product | Involved Artists | Type of Allegation | Solution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Marathon (Alpha) | Antireal | Unauthorized use of the artist’s poster designs as in-game textures/assets. | Bungie publicly admitted to the use and stated that a former employee was to blame. They are now contacting the artist. |
| 2024 | Destiny 2 / NERF Blaster “Ace of Spades” | Tofu Rabbit | Copy of a fan design for the NERF Blaster without permission. | Bungie apologized and hinted at a compensation (via X). |
| 2023 | Destiny 2 (Season of the Deep, in-game cutscene) | Julian Faylona | Strong similarity of an artwork in a cutscene to a work by the artist. | Bungie described it as an error of an external service provider and compensated the artist. (via X) |
| 2021 | Destiny 2 (Trailer for “The Witch Queen”) | Relay314 | Unauthorized use of a fan artwork (character: Xivu Arath) in the trailer | Bungie confirmed the “accidental use,” apologized, credited the artist, and retroactively obtained permission (via X). |
Currently, there is also an ongoing legal dispute with an author who accuses Bungie of having based the story of Destiny 2 on one of his works. Bungie is having difficulties proving the opposite because corresponding old content of the game is no longer available. They rely on videos from a YouTuber who elaborately summarizes the story and lore of the game.
How much patience does Sony have left with Bungie?
I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but it is becoming difficult to remain optimistic about Bungie. Destiny 2 is losing more and more players, the mood among former fans is poor, the new game Marathon has been in development for a long time and could fail brutally, and everything one hears about the internal situation of the studio and employee satisfaction is concerning.
Sony paid a lot of money for the acquisition of Bungie (3.2 billion euros) and now the studio must slowly start to pay back this invested money, this trust to Sony. Already in 2023, a report from Bloomberg stated that Bungie had been 45% below expectations. The struggling Destiny 2 is still the studio’s main source of income, which has not released/sold any expansion since The Final Shape (June 2024) – and the studio was already close to insolvency before Sony’s acquisition.
Sony itself is profit-oriented and will keep a very critical eye on developments at Bungie – especially since they suffered a severe financial setback with Concord, a live-service game, in 2024. According to a report from IGN in 2023, it is possible for Sony to dissolve the existing board of Bungie and take full control if financial goals are not met. It is also conceivable that Sony regards incidents like plagiarism admissions as damaging to their reputation and negatively attributes them to Bungie’s leadership.
Overall, it is difficult to imagine that Bungie will have financial success in the coming years – regardless of the quality of the respective product. Bungie’s former fans are so dissatisfied and frustrated that they – as it currently seems – are negatively inclined towards everything Bungie does. The studio must deliver something genuinely good to avoid being hated “on principle.” Instead, they are delivering a game that is too expensive, has no target audience, and features stolen assets.
If Marathon fails – and I can unfortunately easily imagine that – Sony could lose patience with Bungie. I can’t imagine that the company will tolerate the current situation for much longer. Should the allegedly contractually established financial target of Bungie really be missed, a complete takeover by Sony threatens. Bungie urgently needs a success and must avoid damage control with Marathon.
To achieve a top 5 spot in sales in the USA, I believe Bungie would need to make Marathon more appealing to Destiny players, for example, by focusing more on PvE or providing the option to avoid PvP. Even Escape from Tarkov now has a pure PvE mode.
A shift to PvE content would, however, imply a lot of effort and development time, which would likely come with high costs – after all, the developers need to be paid during that time. Since financial success would still not be guaranteed, this would hardly equate to damage control. Bungie’s greatest hope thus remains Destiny 2. The studio must release high-quality expansions and regain the community’s trust. It will be crucial to listen to player feedback.
Because if the mood remains poor, there is a risk that players will be less willing to spend money.
