Sony seems to have made a strange but not completely unexpected decision for Bungie’s upcoming title Marathon.
As reported by The Game Post, Colin Moriarty shared this information in the latest episode of the Sacred Symbols podcast:
I was told by someone familiar with marketing plans in a key overseas market that there are now no plans to do paid marketing for Marathon at all. I don’t know if those plans were affected by what has recently happened or if that was always the plan or whatever. But it is considered a fairly unusual move for a game of this high profile.
Marathon is still reeling from an ongoing and unresolved plagiarism controversy. But before that happened, Marathon’s closed alphas were receiving mixed reviews at best, as many testers were not fully satisfied with it, and they did not hesitate to share this feedback publicly. Shortly after its alphas, another extraction shooter named Arc Raiders launched its own public playtests. Arc Raiders turned out to be much more well received, to the point that it would be fair to say that it’s stolen Marathon’s thunder.
Over the last week, rumors spread about the toxic work environment that exists in Bungie today, after it went through all those changes prior to and after Sony’s acquisition. Some of Bungie’s former 700 employees who left the company in 2024 said that Marathon was expected to reach the Top 5 charts of NPD/Circana to be considered a success. As a result, we are also hearing stories that Bungie’s morale behind the scenes is in free-fall.
Given the level of scrutiny fans are now leveling towards Bungie and Marathon, it doesn’t seem possible for them to release the game, especially in the current state that it looks like. Removing fern hook’s/antireal’s assets to pass legal clearance, or even hiring antireal/fern may not be enough. Gamers have come up with a pejorative nickname for Marathon that they can only overcome with a complete change of aesthetic.
And even then, would it be worth the effort to go through that process, when that would be even additional costs to a project that already looks like it won’t be successful? Sony is definitely still smarting from the failed release of Concord last year, and that’s compounded by their buyer’s remorse from realizing that Bungie is not the live service game expert that they thought the company was when they acquired it.
For what it’s worth, Moriarty did not mention there were plans to delay the game, just like Paul Tassi heard of all the bad news behind the scenes but wasn’t specifically told this was happening. Let’s hope for the best for Bungie on this.
