Marathon’s Server Slam is winding down at the time of writing this, and the data is not favorable for Bungie’s game.
The game peaked at 146,621 players on Steam, as logged by SteamDB. However, in the succeeding days, it consistently kept trending downward.
Succeeding peaks registered at 83,926 players, 76,437 players, and 64,128 players in the succeeding days. The dev team shared consistent updates revealing a host of issues they found days before launch.
Some fans are eager to make comparisons to other live service games, like its perceived rival ARC Raiders. And on the other end of the spectrum are Highguard and Concord. But these comparisons aren’t useful.
It’s fair to assume that Sony has high expectations, but we don’t know where the bar is. Bungie laid off staff in the middle of its development, and Sony must have adjusted accordingly.
Subsequently, players and influencers are split down the line if Marathon is good, bad, somewhere down the middle, or worth playing. It’s hard to predict how the game will fare, but Sony and Bungie probably don’t expect a blowout launch.