Less than two weeks after briefly sitting in the top 10 of Steam’s best-selling paid games, as of February 2nd, Marathon has fallen to around #220 on the platform (though it will likely bounce up and down as marketing ramps up). At one point it was only trailing games like Counter-Strike 2, Warframe, and Marvel Rivals, which sounds impressive until you remember those are free-to-play. Marathon, meanwhile, will cost you at least $40.
UPDATE: As of 02/05 at 10:00p PST, Marathon has bounced back up to $178.
Now, yes, Steam numbers are not the whole picture. Console sales will matter. Bungie will absolutely point to PlayStation and Xbox when defending the game’s prospects. But pretending PC does not matter for a competitive PvP extraction shooter is pure fantasy. PC is where this genre not only lives, it is where it thrives. If interest on PC drops off this quickly, that is not a minor data point, it’s a warning sign.
The most troubling part is not the rank itself, but the speed of the decline. Pre-orders do not collapse this fast unless excitement cools dramatically. Either people saw something they did not like, heard bad impressions, or collectively decided to stop committing money and wait. None of those explanations are good as they all suggest Marathon is failing to project “must-play” buzz among consumers, which is a serious problem for a game that is supposed to launch a brand-new pillar for Bungie.
Will Marathon be Concord 2? No. Despite the jokes, it will certainly perform significantly better than that. Bungie still knows how to make guns feel good. Their art direction is still strong. Their marketing machine is still massive. All of that guarantees Marathon will have a playerbase to some degree.
But “having a playerbase” is not what Bungie built Marathon for. They did not spend years and massive resources to create a modestly lukewarm niche title. They built it because they want another long-term cash cow, something that can stand alongside or eventually replace Destiny as a primary revenue driver.
Steam’s current trajectory makes that dream look overwhelmingly and unbelievably optimistic.
Extraction shooters are not a wide-open frontier. The space is already crowded with entrenched communities that have invested thousands of hours into their games of choice. To pull those players away, you need something that feels genuinely disruptive or transformative. So far, Marathon looks fairly competent. But competent is not enough to uproot established ecosystems.
This is where Bungie deserves real criticism. The studio seems to be betting heavily on Marathon while simultaneously starving Destiny of meaningful long-term communication. No roadmap. No clear future vision. Lots of silence. From the outside, it looks grim for both franchises. If Marathon does not explode, Bungie risks ending up with two games in awkward middle states instead of one dominant flagship.
For a live-service game, the middle is a dangerous place to live.
Still, Marathon won’t be dead on arrival, at least not immediately. The first few days will be crucial to see how the playerbase feels with the game finally in hand and whether streamers find the game strong enough to hold an audience. The early signs suggest it is very unlikely to become Bungie’s next golden goose. And if this is the project Bungie has quietly been shifting its hopes toward while letting Destiny drift in silence, that should worry anyone who still cares about either franchise.
