Bungie’s long-anticipated Marathon Server Slam has officially wrapped, bringing an end to what was supposed to be the studio’s big confidence-building moment before launch. The open preview kicked off on February 26, 2026 at 10 a.m. PT and ran through this morning at 10 a.m. PT, allowing players across consoles and PCs to jump into Bungie’s extraction shooter just days before its full release on March 5. For several brief hours, it looked like Bungie might actually have another hit on its hands.
At its peak on Thursday, the free Server Slam reached an all-time high of 143,621 concurrent players, an impressive showing that immediately fueled optimism heading into the weekend. The expectation across social media was simple: if weekday numbers were already that strong, the weekend surge would be enormous. Instead, the opposite happened. Player counts steadily declined, eventually topping out at roughly 64,128 players over the weekend, dropping more than 50% since Thursday. Almost instantly, optimism gave way to discourse, and discourse gave way to outright social warfare.
Gaming personalities ranging from streamers to journalists (and their dedicated fanbases) found themselves sharply divided on Marathon. Critics and trolls alike pointed to what they described as a confusing user interface (it’s a mess), an aggressively bright color palette (which we actually like), and a visual identity that some players struggled to parse during moment-to-moment gameplay (which we also like).
Bungie’s defenders took to supporting the stylistic risks, arguing that the colors and style of the Runner Shells were what made it unique among the extraction shooter landscape, and we agree. Still, detractors wasted no time branding the upcoming release of Marathon as “Concord 3,” referencing Sony’s previously troubled multiplayer efforts in Firewalk’s Concord, and later Highguard which many now refer to as “Concord 2”.
To be clear, we do not believe Bungie’s extraction shooter is destined to collapse in the same fashion as those titles. But the sharp drop-off during what should have been the game’s strongest engagement window gave ammunition to skeptics, many of whom openly mocked Bungie, PlayStation, and anyone willing to defend Marathon’s free open beta. Supporters quickly countered that Steam numbers alone do not represent the full picture, which is fair, considering that console audiences traditionally make up a far larger share of Bungie’s player base. BUT! It is also impossible to ignore that historically weak Steam performance has often served as an early warning sign for live-service games facing long-term retention problems that are often quickly forgotten or worse.
So where do we land? Honestly, Marathon looks interesting. The visual style is undeniably cool, and the extraction-shooter premise, niche though it may be, is intriguing enough to warrant curiosity. Under different circumstances, we would probably be all-in. The problem is not the concept.
The problem is Bungie.
Since the launch of Destiny in September 2014, Bungie has overseen a franchise defined as much by mismanagement and instability as by brilliance. Both Destiny and Destiny 2 have endured dramatic swings in direction, controversial decisions, layoffs, studio shakeups, and prolonged community frustration. At the time of writing, Destiny 2 itself hovers around roughly 8,300 players on Steam, hardly the picture of a studio confidently maintaining one live-service ecosystem, let alone preparing to sustain another.
That reality makes the $40 price tag attached to Marathon feel especially risky within a genre that is already niche (there’s that buzzword again). Bungie has increasingly given the impression that Destiny exists primarily as a revenue engine for microtransactions while leadership rakes in ungodly amounts of money while laying people off. Sure, Destiny is a product like anything else and a business needs to make money. But their treatment of Destiny and their apparent disdain toward players leaves so much to be desired, why should we be giving them our trust on a new game? And if the studio has struggled to maintain trust with a franchise that once redefined the modern shooter, why should players assume Marathon will be treated differently a year or two from now?
The frustrating part is that the developers, programmers, designers, and artists (the ones not plagiarizing), the people actually building these worlds, clearly possess immense talent. Those individuals deserve success. They also deserve leadership capable of protecting both their work and the communities that form around it. Whether Bungie’s management structure can provide that remains an open question many players are no longer willing to gamble on. Us included.
If another studio were steering Marathon, we would likely already be preparing to jump in on day one. But Bungie’s leadership now stands atop the burned goodwill of a franchise that once had limitless potential, and trust, once lost, is not easily rebuilt. Until meaningful change happens at the studio level, we have little interest in returning to Destiny or stepping into Marathon at all.
Should Sony ever decide to intervene more directly, salvage what remains of Destiny, and empower the developers who still care deeply about these games while removing the management decisions that have haunted Bungie for years, our stance could change. Until then, Marathon launches March 5 into a player base watching closely and cautiously from the sidelines.
