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[Zacfoldor]

I think the reset will be devastating honestly. There is so much FOMO nowadays and the reset is pretty harsh if they stick with what they have planned.

I'm not sure that a night map and a new shell is going to be what is needed to renew interest with a full reset like this.

Ideally they need people waiting to jump in but who haven't yet because of being mid-season.

I was thinking, if I ran this game how would I save it. I would try to pay Geoff to give it a nomination for GotY and then try to time my content release around TGA. Then I would do a shadowdrop during TGA of some shit and also have a new season happening right around that time. The game needs some huge visual to boost it and it being the year it launched this is its only opportunity to take advantage of this level of press coverage. The key for that plan would be securing a nomination for goty. That will not happen under traditional voting so I would try to grease the wheels with Geoff to "save the gaming industry" and nominate Marathon arbitrarily for GotY.

That or appeal to chuds. I'd prefer the latter.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

It's early. And cryo is launching at 1 pm EST. Early morn 10 am completed hour is about -5% vs yesterday. Every cryo day has been a positive pop.

First one: +18%
Second: +2.5%
Last week: +11% (would have an Easter holiday affect too as Good Friday was next day)

Regardless, it's never been a negative day yet. So should be fine. Game still trending down, but should probably hold at minimum flat to yesterday. Possibly edge up a few pts. We'll have to wait and see. Yesterday's peak was 25.4k as reference.

 

[Zacfoldor]

I just learned that Crimson Desert English reviews has surpassed Marathon in Steam review score. Crimson Desert is now at 86% while Marathon is at 84%. This is QUITE the turnaround. CD started with around 55% positive reviews and has turned it around. Meanwhile Marathon started with around 91% reviews. Mine only looks at English reviews, so not sure what the overall review delta is right now. Please don't take these numbers as 100% since this is just my observation of the english review score but still, it shows that CD has gotten a lot more liked as people have spent time with it and the devs while Marathon might have lost a little of that initial luster.

 

[Pop]

Whats really crazy is the majority of Marathons players are on pc. Just imagine the console numbers

They will have to go f2p or announce D3 already soon

 

[Zacfoldor]

I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do

Marathon is a great game for uncs. As signs of a crash change the video game industry, there might not be a lot of those left.

www.404media.co

Some of us are buying in-game cosmetic items not because we want them that bad, but as a signal to Sony that there's money to be made here.

 

[zaga]

I'm worried that fairly soon my blocklist is going to be larger than the number of active players

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do

Marathon is a great game for uncs. As signs of a crash change the video game industry, there might not be a lot of those left.

www.404media.co

Wow this is sad...

Like you already payed them for the base game, forcing themselves to participate in the scam that is live service is just sad and it speaks volumes on how awful is not only the game industry, but also the game player base.

 

[Roman Empire]

I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do

Marathon is a great game for uncs. As signs of a crash change the video game industry, there might not be a lot of those left.

www.404media.co

Certified Consumer moment

 

[Plague Doctor]

I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do

Marathon is a great game for uncs. As signs of a crash change the video game industry, there might not be a lot of those left.

www.404media.co

Isn't that saying the silent part out loud for the defense squad for this game?

"I wish I didn't care but I really, really do care. A lot."

 

[Saber]

I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do

Marathon is a great game for uncs. As signs of a crash change the video game industry, there might not be a lot of those left.

www.404media.co

Some of us are buying in-game cosmetic items not because we want them that bad, but as a signal to Sony that there's money to be made here.

The signal between them and Sony:

 

[Fake]

I Wish I Didn’t Care About 'Marathon' Player Numbers, But I Do

Marathon is a great game for uncs. As signs of a crash change the video game industry, there might not be a lot of those left.

www.404media.co

Some of us are buying in-game cosmetic items not because we want them that bad, but as a signal to Sony that there's money to be made here.

 

[Mondai]

Marathon is blasting its way..... to death

 

[Plague Doctor]

Numbers aren't really going up with Cryo. If this is the trend, the game literally needs to pull a hail mary with a FF14 Relaunch with more modes when they return meant to bring in a general audience. Even that won't really work as the development cost and Bungie's notorious glacial speed to do anything ensures it will be way, way too costly and too slow.

Shit will be a ghost town by season 2 as it stands now. And then they wipe everyone who remains for a night version of an existing map and a new shell. .

 

[falconhoof]

Yup, game is down from this time yesterday. Not by much, but it's a signal of no Cryo bump, of if there is, then the bump isn't enough to carry it above the current daily fall off of players. At least in Europe, we'll see how North America goes, which is the main audience.

 

[Avid Reading Horse]

This will be a tough one to fix with a simple patch overnight

This thread didn't get a lot of traction:

News Game Dev  Thread 'Marathon cheaters will be permabanned immediately, claims Bungie'

Feb 24, 2026

Marathon cheaters will be immediately permabanned, Bungie says

"These things are non-negotiable."

www.polygon.com

---

Bungie has announced that anyone found cheating in Marathon "will be permanently banned forever, no second chances."

Titled "networking and security," Bungie's official blog post details plenty of insight into how the upcoming extraction shooter will work from a technical standpoint, but the fact cheaters will immediately face the full wrath of the banhammer is refreshing. This is in contrast to Embark Studios, which uses a three-strikes system for its popular exctraction shooter Arc Raiders. First...

• LectureMaster
• Replies: 54
• Forum: Gaming Discussion

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But yeah I wasn't super convinced with their bluster about being able to handle the cheating problem.

I figure you probably need to be able to buy the cheats in order to work on detecting them. Maybe the Marathon team doesn't have that kind of budget right now...

 

[RafterXL]

Who is everyone? The drop of players has been constant since day 1, so where is the drop off starting for people who has done everything?

According to the achievements, like 40% of the people who bought it on Steam barely even played it:

And almost no one is level 100:

So it's definitely not a case of everyone has done everything and stopped playing. It's a case of people just consistently bailing from day one.

Wow this is sad...

Like you already payed them for the base game, forcing themselves to participate in the scam that is live service is just sad and it speaks volumes on how awful is not only the game industry, but also the game player base.

I mean, we had people on this very site buying Highguard MTX like this, so it seems to be a common illness.

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/04/09/checking-in-on-marathon-a-month-after-launch/

 

[Plague Doctor]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/04/09/checking-in-on-marathon-a-month-after-launch/

Btw, Arc Raiders which is curb stomping it only cost 75 million per the studio for comparison.

Edit:

That 250 number is just development. It does not include marketing which involved the movies created, the advertising push, and the streamer sponsorship. So yeah....... going have to add 10s of millions to that number.

I really hope the fans of this game are buying 10 of every cosmetic in this game.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

They are in for the "long haul"

 

[Timberwolf25]

No bump and/or even a decline on the start of the Cryo days really is a bad sign that this is about to go into cardiac arrest.
The free Invincible VS beta started today, so I'm 1000% sure that the game's CCU will skyrocket and people will resume having a blast after that ends on April 11th.

Soon it'll be cheaters vs cheaters and it'll be hilarious to hear one cheater complain about other cheaters because they cheat better than your sorry ass.

 

[Kronark]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/04/09/checking-in-on-marathon-a-month-after-launch/

I'm still kind of at a loss for how 300 people worked on Marathon for at least 4 years and all they managed to make was 4 maps and a handful of hero classes. Keep in mind that Bungie had an engine with Destiny, multiplayer code, control and gunplay code, etc. Yes this stuff had to be workshopped into a new game implementation but like... They had resources another studio could only dream of starting with. They had institutional knowledge that should have led to some of these problems being tackled pretty quickly.

What the fuck were they doing with all that money this whole time?

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

I'm still kind of at a loss for how 300 people worked on Marathon for at least 4 years and all they managed to make was 4 maps and a handful of hero classes. Keep in mind that Bungie had an engine with Destiny, multiplayer code, control and gunplay code, etc. Yes this stuff had to be workshopped into a new game implementation but like... They had resources another studio could only dream of starting with. They had institutional knowledge that should have led to some of these problems being tackled pretty quickly.

What the fuck were they doing with all that money this whole time?

 

[mdkirby]

CoI'm still kind of at a loss for how 300 people worked on Marathon for at least 4 years and all they managed to make was 4 maps and a handful of hero classes. Keep in mind that Bungie had an engine with Destiny, multiplayer code, control and gunplay code, etc. Yes this stuff had to be workshopped into a new game implementation but like... They had resources another studio could only dream of starting with. They had institutional knowledge that should have led to some of these problems being tackled pretty quickly.

What the fuck were they doing with all that money this whole time?

 

[Roman Empire]

Now that I look, we are 107 pages into this madness.

To 50 pages more!

 

[diffusionx]

I'm still kind of at a loss for how 300 people worked on Marathon for at least 4 years and all they managed to make was 4 maps and a handful of hero classes. Keep in mind that Bungie had an engine with Destiny, multiplayer code, control and gunplay code, etc. Yes this stuff had to be workshopped into a new game implementation but like... They had resources another studio could only dream of starting with. They had institutional knowledge that should have led to some of these problems being tackled pretty quickly.

What the fuck were they doing with all that money this whole time?

I said this and people called me a retard for not understanding this "genre".

It's not even a genre, it's a game mode. Look at The Division.

 

[MLSabre]

Certified Consumer moment

I frankly despise seeing people calling themselves consumer, implying that they'd readily pay for anything at a drop of a hat. No thought whatsoever if it's worth your time or money.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Now that I look, we are 107 pages into this madness.

To 50 pages more!

Wont make another 50 pages

 

[Pop]

$250 mil + dev cost is insane for any game but an extraction game is just wild

Western devs budgets need an overhaul

 

[The Mad Draklor]

Now that I look, we are 107 pages into this madness.

To 50 pages more!

Gotta thank Bungie for creating a super slo-mo trainwreck. A Concord 2.0, while it would have been very funny, would not be as entertaining as what we've gotten.

 

[mdkirby]

Now that I look, we are 107 pages into this madness.

To 50 pages more!

I have never understood the appeal of nascar, or things like jackass….but I think I get it now

 

[Plague Doctor]

Now that I look, we are 107 pages into this madness.

To 50 pages more!

Yeah we should get atleast that many before Horizon shits out their GaaS slop.

Edit:

NGL, not so much here but elsewhere I am loving that we are entering the part of the cope cycle where people are trying to shame people for rooting for a game to fail and grave dancing.

Ah, the cope cycle. This is kind of accpetance phase with the caveat where people want to guilt others for pointing out the obvious.

 

[falconhoof]

Could end up to be one page per million spent.

 

[GermanZepp]

I said this and people called me a retard for not understanding this "genre".

It's not even a genre, it's a game mode. Look at The Division.

Maybe "the genre" is like that. The problem is spending 250/300 millon on the game. If marathon development cost 75 millon like ARC the flop would be a little less embarrassing.

 

[Cumulus]

you joke, but I dead serious think that that`s not far from the truth.

I mean, it`s the only logical explanation, folks!

 

[Esquie]

Now that I look, we are 107 pages into this madness.

To 50 pages more!

CCU threads are more entertaining than most games.

 

[Negotiator101]

The question is are these numbers good enough to sustain it? There's plenty games with a lower CCU that are still running but obviously not all are AAA and none only came out just over a month ago.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

4 pm completed hour CCU
All time peak was launch day 88.3k. Yesterday's peak at 25.4k is -62.9k or -71%

Today vs yesterday: 20.7k vs 19.2k (+1.5k or +8%)

Yesterday's peak 25.4k. If the rate holds, peak tonight will be 27.4k. If it ends around this number, it'll be similar to Tuesday's peak

Yesterday's low 7.5k. If the rate holds, low tonight will be 8.1k

Cryo bump as always increasing the gamers on day one

Alternate method to estimate peaks and valleys (ballpark ratios)
On normal weekdays, 3:1. For example, a peak 30k will have a low of 10k. For Fri/Sat, gamers stay up playing so the ratio is 2.5:1

Steam Rankings
Daily Active Users 78
Global Top Sellers 71
Weekly Top Sellers 41 ending Apr 7 (was 32 last week)
Top Rated Games 5,510 (84.63%)

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

Well, looks like my initial prediction about 3-4 weeks before they will shut it down will be true. 7900 lowest so far. Tomorrow is friday so i expect some improvement but considering how saturday/sunday went last time I fully expect game to hit 12-13-14k on monday at peak probably 5k low.

At 10k players they will be running deeply in red for militance of this game let alone development of new content. So not only they are still in red after 40$ sales on it but also red on maintain. Cryo was supposed to be big but it wasn't, their next content drop is nothing interesting. Next season is supposed to be in 2 months. On consoles it's out of top100 played so probably even worse than steam.

I wonder what i happening right now in bungie. Red alarms should be already on release day when it didn't cross 100k. Now probably whole thing is on fire. Destiny2 can't support whole studio and marathon flopped harder than anyone predicted.

Dude id pay to watch what's going on there like a PPV

 

[hyperbertha]

Would love to be on a fly on the wall during Bungie Sony higher up meetings.

This is a total disaster.

Men in boxes is on those meetings. I'm 100 percent sure he's a bungie exec, partly responsible for their live service turn. And in the latest meeting he's feeling very optimistic about the game and told everyone to just wait for the game to be fixed and players counts will rise up soon, very soon.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Would love to be on a fly on the wall during Bungie Sony higher up meetings.

This is a total disaster.

Who knows.

But it's obvious Sony execs had no idea what's a good or bad GAAS. They must had liked what they saw when they bought them as the game would had been in early progress back in 2021, where they bought them out in 2022. It's obvious they dont since they shotgunned buying or partnering up with a ton of GAAS studios, had their internal studios making them asap, and somehow Concord was such a great showstopper they bought out the company to have it all.

They probably didnt have a lot going on about Marathon at the time except seeing it's a shooter, a ton of neon colours, the plagiarized art style and icons they wouldnt know about, and assumed Bungie could do no wrong being their trusted MP overseers. Probably got carte blanche to do what they wanted.

At that time, extraction shooters were microscopic in gaming. It was probably Tarkov, Hunt, The Division Dark Zone, COD DMZ, and surely some obscure games nobody heard of. ARC's first trailer was new and who knows what it'd be by the time it launched in fall 2025.

What probably happened is Pete Parsons and gang convinced Sony extraction shooters were the next big shooter genre, it's crazy look would be loved by gamers and Destiny 2 was rolling in the money. So it'd be a 1-2 punch of shooter sales. Two games that look totally different and play different. These games would be big money makers that would make bank and help fund Destiny 3 down the road. They would had promoted to Sony's execs their master road map and with their Halo and Destiny trac record could lead the charge being the company's MP masters. And in 2021 and early 2022 it was still covid time so interest rates were rock bottom (possibly lowest in history) so companies were gobbling up everyone (Embracer did the same around that time). So with Sony itching with a bag of GAAS cash waving it front of everyone's faces they are buyers, Pete was savvy and sold them out for giant money.

Problem is Destiny 2 seemed to tank right away leading to big lay offs, and trust tanked and execs took that Gummy Bear project off them and shifted the team to an internal SIE studio.

Marathon has bombed, and who knows if and when Destiny 3 comes out. I'd assume part of their big road map is Destiny 3 as a cash cow and NOT Marathon and Gummy Bears as their only future projects at the time of purchase.

 

[mdkirby]

you joke, but I dead serious think that that`s not far from the truth.

I mean, it`s the only logical explanation, folks!

More likely gross incompetence, meetings about meeting to book a meeting to discuss having a meeting….massive team bloat so nobody has any agency and litterally every minor decision needs to go through a gazillion committee meetings and take months. There was an interview with an old Bethesda dev I think, who described back in the day they just had some random dev wing building all the werewolf stuff in his spare time cos he thought it would be fun….then as the company grew such stuff became impossible and even fixing a simple bug that should take 5 mins would take months.

Whole Aaa industry just needs tearing down, birth 30 new small companies from the ashes of each mega corp and we'd have better games with more creativity and actually sustainable revenue targets.

 

[Plague Doctor]

Whole Aaa industry just needs tearing down, birth 30 new small companies from the ashes of each mega corp and we'd have better games with more creativity and actually sustainable revenue targets.

Facts.

Western AAA is unsustainable, bloated, and the trajectory they are going down with price hikes and scam like monetization schemes in GaaS is doomed to implode. Fortnite even is showing cracks. Their mythical goal Fortnite needed layoffs.

Let it burn. There are other sectors and regions in gaming and the multitudes of smaller dev studios created from the ashes is a far better gamble for better games.

 

[falconhoof]

More likely gross incompetence, meetings about meeting to book a meeting to discuss having a meeting….massive team bloat so nobody has any agency and litterally every minor decision needs to go through a gazillion committee meetings and take months. There was an interview with an old Bethesda dev I think, who described back in the day they just had some random dev wing building all the werewolf stuff in his spare time cos he thought it would be fun….then as the company grew such stuff became impossible and even fixing a simple bug that should take 5 mins would take months.

Whole Aaa industry just needs tearing down, birth 30 new small companies from the ashes of each mega corp and we'd have better games with more creativity and actually sustainable revenue targets.

It's funny you should say that, and I'm largely in agreement. The problem is who gets to setup these companies and how quickly they fall back on the same ways of making things.

Ex-Bungie Boss Harold Ryan Launches Triple-A Game Startup ProbablyMonsters

Harold Ryan, after more than three years in stealth mode, is finally ready to talk about his next venture after leaving as head of Bungie, the game studio behind hits like "Halo" and "Destiny." Ryan s...

www.yahoo.com

Harold Ryan left Bungie to setup "a holding company and incubator that will launch and support multiple subsidiary studios, each one built around a specific game title."

They started with two studios: Cauldron who's game was cancelled, and then FireWalk who were acquired by Sony to make a little title called Concord.

They currently still have a roster of games coming including that Nazi killing title that got recently shown, though I don't know if plans changed from their initial idea of fostering these creative spaces to bring back the spark to the industry.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Men in boxes is on those meetings. I'm 100 percent sure he's a bungie exec, partly responsible for their live service turn. And in the latest meeting he's feeling very optimistic about the game and told everyone to just wait for the game to be fixed and players counts will rise up soon, very soon.

I never would have greenlit such a sweaty game.

Bigger maps, higher TTK, more asymmetry between characters, more social puzzles...

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Facts.

Western AAA is unsustainable, bloated, and the trajectory they are going down with price hikes and scam like monetization schemes in GaaS is doomed to implode. Fortnite even is showing cracks. Their mythical goal Fortnite needed layoffs.

Let it burn. There are other sectors and regions in gaming and the multitudes of smaller dev studios created from the ashes is a far better gamble for better games.

3 big problems IMO. And it's off the top of my head. Might be more.

1. Too much money floating around. Corporate coffers and investors funds must have the loosest locks on them. Most industries try to go lean and conserve cash, but gaming and tech are the opposite. It seems like an industry norm to go balls deep to the last dime. So despite a bag of cash, lots seem to live pay stub to pay stub where one bad step and it's instant foreclosure

2. Digital medium and overrating people. Unlike other industries, gaming is a digital medium. So big pocket coffers assume some guy who worked on Game X assumes to be a great game maker or new studio for Game Y. Whereas no bank would ever fund a guy who worked at Pepsi $100s of millions to suddenly bottle his own new batch of soft drinks, companies will fund a game studio tons of money with zero track record. So the industry thinks it's easy to just make a great game and have it digitally downloaded with no experience needed or capital like a factory line. The industry assumes just because a guy was a director working on an old game, it somehow makes the guy qualified to have a $100M budget for his new studio to make a game from scratch when he never had grassroots experience how to run a studio from the bottom up

3. Every studio probably has posters of COD, Fortnite and PUBG on their walls. You name the big name success story and no doubt in their board room meetings they talk about them itching to be the next ARC or CS2. You can tell because a good chunk of pricey GAAS games are always shooters. A very fad driven industry where lots of studios copy each other. Dont be surprised if the next bunch of years flood gaming with extraction shooters because ARC did well

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Quick hourly check. The 4 pm completed hour of +8% has now decreased in the 6 pm completed hour to +5%. It's cryo Thursday.

 

[RafterXL]

I said this and people called me a retard for not understanding this "genre".

It's not even a genre, it's a game mode. Look at The Division.

Not only is it not a sustainable genre, it's best as a game mode anyway. Like, the best part about the Dark Zone is that it was optional, and if I got sick of running PvE stuff I could drop in and PvP a bit. And if I got wrecked, I didn't mind because there is an entire game attached to it full of progression that wasn't linked to it.

Contrary to popular PvP player belief, sweaty isn't a lifestyle, it's a mood. The vast majority of people like to turn it off and on, and that's why the most popular PvP games have little to no risk, it's why the biggest extraction game ever made, by a large margin, is 90% PvE and it's why every PvP game is littered with cheaters. Most people don't like doing nothing but getting their shit kicked it and they damn sure doing like losing progress in the act of getting their shit kicked in.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I said this and people called me a retard for not understanding this "genre".

It's the Omega genre. I find it hilarious that people still pretend it's not.

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

I'd put extraction as easily one of the worst genres in gaming history, battle royale held that for awhile but extraction said hold my beer

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Not only is it not a sustainable genre, it's best as a game mode anyway. Like, the best part about the Dark Zone is that it was optional, and if I got sick of running PvE stuff I could drop in and PvP a bit. And if I got wrecked, I didn't mind because there is an entire game attached to it full of progression that wasn't linked to it.

Contrary to popular PvP player belief, sweaty isn't a lifestyle, it's a mood. The vast majority of people like to turn it off and on, and that's why the most popular PvP games have little to no risk, it's why the biggest extraction game ever made, by a large margin, is 90% PvE and it's why every PvP game is littered with cheaters. Most people don't like doing nothing but getting their shit kicked it and they damn sure doing like losing progress in the act of getting their shit kicked in.

It doesnt even make sense how it became it's own shooter genre on its own.

Extraction games themselves have little content, but get by on the game loop. Pretty much every other shooter has way more maps and modes, and some still have a SP campaign. Some games even have PVE or offline MP against cpu bots too if you dont want to go play against gamers. Full package kind of games.

But I guess a lot of gamers and studios treat it as its own separate game due to bigger maps and the looting/inventory aspect of it. Similar to how BR games can be its own thing.

And a lot of gamers and studios like it that way instead of having it buried in the game as another mode you might forget about.