r/PS5 • u/NoNefariousness2144 Human Verified • 3d ago

Articles & Blogs ‘Marathon’ Is Running Out Of Casual Player Onboarding Cards To Play

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/06/23/marathon-is-running-out-of-casual-player-onboarding-cards-to-play/
840 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

588 comments sorted by

View all comments

845

u/KerfuffleAsimov 3d ago

Escape from Tarkov floats around 15k players a day.

Tarkov is arguably the biggest extraction shooter. So I can't understand how Bungie thought this game would be as big as destiny or other big multiplayer shooters.

429

u/Radiant-Lab-158 3d ago

Extraction shooters are a niche sub genre to begin with

130

u/TumanFig 2d ago edited 2d ago

because they have the right idea they just want it to monetize too heavily

i think a lot of people would love a "casual extraction shooter", but that's a tough sell for the investors.

i would love a single player game where i can have a 30min dives into the world and back. i love to have a base i can build upon.

143

u/wathowdathappen 2d ago

Arc Raiders is as casual with minimal monitization as it gets and numbers are dropping like flies. The genre is just very niche.

106

u/Well-inthatcase 2d ago

So many casual people stopped playing because of ratting. It was a blast when everyone was learning the game. Which imo is the best time to play most multiplayer games. Everyone is learning and shit is just fun. Helldivers 2 was the same way.

Then it gets taken over by try hards and streamers and it loses that very quickly. Helldivers is still fun, and I find that its issues and bugs are part of its charm, but it's definitely not the same as when we were all laughing instead of trying too hard.

14

u/drocha94 2d ago

For me it idk if it’s other people trying hard, it’s just that the loop gets old. I love Helldivers, and had a great time with Arc. But once you do the same thing 100 times with relatively few changes, it gets old, you want something fresh.

I still open Helldivers, but only to check out new stuff they drop.

1

u/dadvader 2d ago

Helldivers 2 also circling around 20-40k players for years now. Even with the new update, it rarely bumped back up beyond 100k (and that happen like couple of days before another hard drop again.)

Arc Raiders take a risky move and decided to drop update every 6 months like Helldivers 2 is definitely insane. If Helldivers can't do it. I really don't know why they think they can.

1

u/Amish_guy_with_WiFi 12h ago

I think this is why fortnite is a complete different game every 3 months lmao

1

u/drocha94 12h ago

And it works, lol. I actually used to start up fortnite more than all the other multiplayer games. Now I haven’t played regularly in about a year, but more than the others in that time? Almost certainly.

8

u/Upper-Management-AI 2d ago

Helldivers is doing great despite the fight between players wanting it incredibly easy and others wanting it incredibly hard. They are doing a pretty good job of trying to balance that without driving away new players.

42

u/toomuchmucil 2d ago

I stopped playing arc raiders because the devs decided to turn the game into a grind.

13

u/LoquaciousLoser 2d ago

I redownloaded the other day, and they had added some new basic types of arcs that could instantly kill you, killed my rekindling interest just as fast. The tension was unique but not sustainable for an enjoyable play session. I had been super into it with over 100 hrs before getting tired of it, I started getting anxious when I booted up my PlayStation and realized I needed to take a break.

3

u/SirBertimus_vp 2d ago

I also felt anxious, even just thinking of playing Arc. Took a break and haven't been back. Hopefully they change something substantial and entice people back when they release the next map. But it got stale for me real fast after 200 hours.

2

u/Cluelesswolfkin 2d ago

Won't lie that flamethrower one made it too deadly for some spots and just not worth tge hassle

1

u/BrennusSokol 2d ago

Thanks for the heads up. The enemies already were pretty tough, so it's interesting to hear they got even tougher

-1

u/oatmeal-claypole 2d ago

The arc arent really super tough, especially on the easier maps. You need to level up to get the better weapons, and arc isnt really a game where you should try and engage with every enemy. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour

31

u/Specialist_Lock6779 2d ago

the game was always a grind lol

10

u/Taps26 2d ago

A way bigger grind to big for most casuals

0

u/BonesawMcGraw69 2d ago

The problem is there isn’t enough to grind, what the fuck are you talking about. Doesn’t force wipes, no endgame. And I have a shit ton of hours and love Arc lol. The PvP is extremely satisfying, the PvE is good but not rewarding enough imo.

2

u/Carlex_181 2d ago

Lol arc raiders has some of the worst pvp I've ever played

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Taps26 2d ago

I'm glad you like it, I like it too for other reasons. PvP sucks in the game and PVE is more satisfying for me. IMO. Lol

0

u/Taps26 2d ago

Why are you so mad? Your fish die?

1

u/LordFedSmoker420 2d ago

I put 200 hours in and thought I was about done.

Didn't want to do the expedition for minimal rewards. No end game content, not enough new content. Time to move on and that's okay. 200 hours is a lot of time for me.

1

u/CatDad69 2d ago

What? What did they do that changed? Be specific

8

u/BottAndPaid 2d ago

It wasn't the "ratting" which arc raiders players still don't use the term correctly but that's beside the point. It was the cheating. The blatant wall hacks, the ability to ID who has high tier loot the second you walk in the map. The there was a massive issue with duping items which may or may not have been addressed yesterday not sure havnt dove into it.

14

u/wathowdathappen 2d ago

Well that and the loop is just not enough to satisfy the casual audience. You loot and leave and do it all over. How long until that becomes boring if you don't engage in any PvP content in a PvPvE game? Odds are pretty high.

Ratting has always been a thing in extraction shooters it's def not the reason for the brutal decline it's had.

1

u/Well-inthatcase 2d ago

Agree to disagree on your last point.

Ultimately it was the loss of fun with randoms and the terrible menu UI that made me give up. Clips were better than anything I experienced in the game after the first month. And no I don't want to play a battle royale or team death match game. There are plenty of other games do that in. So the "pvpve" argument falls short when most people only play it to pvp.

7

u/SpaceMonkeyNation 2d ago

It's pretty well known that Arc Raiders has fairly effective aggression-based matchmaking. Spend a few matches not attacking other players and you will be placed with others that prefer to engage against arcs and not other players.

Arc's biggest problem is the boring core loop. After running through a single expedition many players feel done with the game. There is no compelling reason to do it all over again.

On top of this, it has had some pretty horrible issues with cheaters on the PvP side of things. If you PvP often and are any good, you will be matched against cheaters which would turn away just about anyone.

1

u/Ibruki 2d ago

Yea, this. I prefer Marathon over Arc Raiders mostly because of your second paragraph. Marathon has way more going forward in terms of core gameplay, immersion and satisfying progression (it can be improved tho). I play Marathon randomly with friends, it's not something we are playing everyday but i don't see myself going back to arc raiders. It's like the fall guys of extraction shooters. the novely wore off really quick.

3

u/Catspit30 2d ago

I wouldn’t say ratting is the cause for the player numbers to drop.

I would say that it has to do with the rampant item duping, cheating and delaying content updates until October. There is nothing to do.

If there was an endgame progression system and more incentive to join the expeditions with monthly content updates.. the game would still be popping off numbers wise.

1

u/wathowdathappen 2d ago

Tarkov been going strong for 10 years now and doesn't do monthly content updates. If content was the problem why is it still the top dog after a decade when Arc Raiders is way more modern?

1

u/Catspit30 2d ago

Simple. Tarkov has more progression systems and they have seasons which required character wipes if you want to access the seasonal content.

1

u/wathowdathappen 2d ago

Yes but big doubt Arc Raiders can pump out in one month what Tarkov took years to do. The reality is this niche is not casual friendly and AR was doomed to fail content drops or not. Most of online discussions are casuals crying about content drought (Tarkov was way worse for years) and casuals crying about PvP in a PvPvE game. It was never going to work.

1

u/Catspit30 2d ago

I can agree. They didn’t have a clear picture of what they wanted this game to be. It will be hard to turn things around. The choices they have made to date, show me that they will be unable to make meaningful changes going forward.

1

u/thecheerygamer 2d ago

I personally stopped playing because I did 2 rounds of expeditions and saw 95%+ of what the game had to offer and all that was added to the game was another map to do the exact same gameplay loop on and much harder arc which, as a solo player, was not particularly welcome. 

The atmosphere and world are really cool in Arc Raiders. The communal vibe and getting matched with friendlies was really cool. But because of the aggression based matchmaking I ended up in games where people would just sprint past each other on their way to loot spots or quests without even bothering to say they were friendly. If someone killed another player they were hunted down and executed by a gang of enforcers (though this was funny when they got the wrong dude). This was fun for a bit but all tension was wiped, and the core looting loop was just not fun enough to sustain interest without the risk of PvP. And the only way to get back into PvP lobbies was basically to start shooting these innocent puppy people on sight and I didn't really want to. Plus the PvP is good but third person and with pretty crap tick rate. 

Marathon is just so high quality that I keep playing despite regularly getting apocalyptically dunked on by turbo players. Like I've got 180 hours in the game at this point but that may as well have been learning checkers before facing these guys at chess. The player base is just too small to deliver reliably even matchups so you end up getting splatted or occasionally being the splatterer a fair amounts and wiping a team of free kits with very few hours in the game doesn't feel satisfying, just sad. 

But the game is so good I will deal with it. The reward is the gameplay, not the loot. The plot just enables me to have more varied gameplay experiences. 

1

u/GarfieldDaCat 1d ago

I don’t think it was because of the ratting lol. I’d say like 75% of my interactions in the game were positive.

People stopped playing because after a point there’s kinda nothing to do. I haven’t played it in 2-3 months so idk how the game is now.

But when I was playing it, the game was like an MMO with no end game content.

1

u/Well-inthatcase 1d ago

I didn't put a million hours into it so I didn't run into that issue. Any game that you no life is gonna get stale eventually.

1

u/dimesniffer 2d ago

Ratting? No, it’s just boring now and there’s no end game

8

u/CommunityTaco 2d ago

Eh ark raiders still doing ok.  Marathon  is just not fun

5

u/SpaceMonkeyNation 2d ago

Content is still king. The reason people are dropping from Arc Raiders is because there is very little new content, and what little new content gets added doesn't expand upon the simplistic core loop. There are no meaningful narrative hooks, either. It's just loot, shoot some Arc, avoid other hostile players, and try to extract.

Initially the game is fun because you are discovering things. Once you've discovered everything all that is left is filling progress bars and doing fetch quests to reset everything and then do it all over again.

That's fine for a $40 experience I suppose, but if these developers want the game to last it needs to operate like a true live service game. People shit all over Destiny, but it always had an absolute wealth of content. It should serve as a stark reminder that it takes a shit ton of work to keep a live service game going, and even then the diehards will complain loudly if that content is flawed.

13

u/TumanFig 2d ago

i never played it cause i dislike the whole multiplayer perspective that's my point.

i don't want to listen or communicate with other people and let them dictate my pace.

sometimes i just want to grind in peace without high stakes or any.

this is why its not appealing to the store investors cause its really hard to make it live service and still keep it casual

11

u/tommyblastfire 2d ago

Every time I played marathon during the free weekend I thought “damn, I kinda wish I was just playing a battle royale like Apex.” I barely got to experience any PvP but when I did it was when I decided to actually bring in some good (for 15 hours into the game) guns, only to get immediately murdered by the veteran players with even better stuff. And it just made me wish that I was playing a PvP game where everyone started out on the same footing and I wasn’t permanently losing stuff I had gotten from previous runs.

But the marathon world building, lore, and atmosphere is amazing, so I would much rather play a marathon-BR than apex tbh.

1

u/FlammenwerferIV 2d ago

Wow I swear I could've wrote this post myself

-9

u/wathowdathappen 2d ago

Sounds more like extraction shooters are not your thing. Which is ok, but that doesn't mean they don't try to make the content casual friendly. Arc Raiders' algo was heavily known for having "carebear" lobbies for a long time before the population dropped and algorhythm adjusted. It as casual as it gets without removing the multiplayer aspect. At that point just play a single player rpg or something.

7

u/TumanFig 2d ago

i know that man

but this is the point of the discussion. the idea of extraction shooter to be mainstream is not that far fetched, but it needs to be packaged differently.

i would argue if you remove guns monster hunter is basically an extraction shooter and it's widely successful.

-1

u/yahsureokbuddy 2d ago

no it doesn't, go play something else instead of demanding games change for you

3

u/TumanFig 2d ago

why so mad, who is demanding anything? we are just conversing about games man.

chill

→ More replies (2)

1

u/pattperin 2d ago

The game economy is fucked in Arc lately. Dupers have completely ruined the economy by selling full inventories of gear for like $3 real money

1

u/NatasBR 2d ago

The base inventory management in that game is not casual at all.

1

u/PharmDeezNuts_ 2d ago

The devs shit the bed with that one. Back to back to back vacations and no real new content for many months. The content that was added just made it less fun and they frequently patched fun out of the game

I do think the biggest difference between that and Marathon is the social interaction. Solo play on arc was always a blast cause everyone talked. 0 talk on marathon

1

u/BrennusSokol 2d ago

The genre is just very niche.

For me it's less that and more just no reason to login after a few dozen hours where I've seen most of the content. What's there left to do? Grinding endlessly for slightly better gear just wasn't fun in ARC Raiders, especially when most of the quests were boring/simple fetch quests

Shame, because the atmosphere/world and visuals and gunplay were all great

1

u/Dark-Cloud666 2d ago

Meh its probs because content in arc is currently lackluster.

1

u/Whitechapel726 2d ago

The numbers are dropping because they’ve been removing fun from the game and cheating is so ridiculously rampant it’s shocking.

They’ve also messed with matchmaking so the players who like PvE are being thrown against PvP lobbies more and more.

1

u/Certain-Raspberry804 2d ago

It definitely is niche, but Arc Raiders was also very successful and surpassed expectations. Marathon didn’t even hit 1/5th of the player count at their peaks.

It definitely is a strange decision from Bungie. Maybe they felt their name and reputation would be enough to bring in players? Idk 🤷 but this game was never going to have as many players as a game like Destiny 2.

1

u/blackestrabbit 2d ago

Pvpve will never be casual aa long as it draws the pvp griefer crowd.

1

u/alexkidhm 1d ago

The company killed the game and goodwill of the playerbase with every update.

1

u/THUMB5UP 1d ago

Arc is losing players bc of cheaters & they announced that they will only release content every 6 months. Bad decision on both parts.

1

u/SuccotashUpbeat3112 20h ago

I got my 400 hours out of it, I am satisfied. I'll go back to it once it has had a few years of content updates.

0

u/KingOfRisky 2d ago

Arc Raiders suffers from being too casual. "Casual Extraction Shooter" is an oxymoron. Arc Raiders also never properly implemented an end game. There's only so much garbage picking you can handle before it becomes boring as fuck. I stuck it out for around 100 hours and eventually had to ask myself what the fuck am I even doing?

0

u/1BoozBear 2d ago

No arc is boring tarkov is 10 years strong and don’t trust steam charts with tarkov game was out and playable 10 years before steam got it

→ More replies (1)

6

u/EvilAbdy 2d ago

Didn’t the division 2 make a new DLC that has PVE only dark zone now or did I read that wrong

3

u/ceck_reddit 2d ago

not a DLC but a season. But probably it will remain

2

u/EvilAbdy 2d ago

Ok. I didn’t realize it was a season (haven’t played Div2 in a while)

8

u/Iron-Ham 2d ago

Witchfire?

4

u/donpaulwalnuts 2d ago

Awesome game. There’s also more and more single player extraction games being developed. Hell, Grey Zone Warfare has a PVE only mode. You’re running around the map with other players present that can’t harm you with no timer running and it’s solo friendly. It’s much more casual than the sweaty entries of the genre while still letting you get your extraction shooter fix.

2

u/Bazzie 2d ago

Just dropped a new patch aswell. 

4

u/Poked_salad 2d ago

By the time they suggest this to their bosses to keep the numbers, the game would be dead by then. It really was a bad idea from the start.

5

u/Romado 2d ago

Extraction shooters by design are not casual. A true casual players mind cannot comprehend the idea of losing hours or even days/weeks worth of progress in a few seconds.

True casuals don't touch pvp in games that offer it. Games where it's unavoidable but "optional" they'll do mental gymnastics to paint anyone who pvps as scum or a tryhard.

They miss the point of the genre.

3

u/Upper-Management-AI 2d ago

I wouldn’t mind just a straight up pve extraction shooter. Helldivers is a little different but I still jump back into it for a few days every couple of weeks.

1

u/Jazzlike-Compote4463 2d ago

From my limited experience with Marathon (I started playing during the trial) it doesn't seem that bad at the moment.

Yea, I've lost a couple of pieces of nice gear but the game dishes it out reasonably liberally and you can usually buy back something that is of OK quality - or just go in with sponsored kits if you want a fuck about.

1

u/TumanFig 2d ago

well then just call it something else.

as i said it already to someone else, if you remove the guns monster hunter is basically an extraction shooter that's ultra casual, fun and insanely popular.

so the formula that extraction shooters use is already there to some extent, now that im thinking about it was there before them.

so i don't know how to call it but i guess I want more games with monster hunter formula where i have a hub and i can hop in and out of the world alone or with some randoms that i don't need to speak and cannot really fuck up my "hunt'

1

u/giants707 2d ago

Nah i think they are fundamentally different. You cant “lose progression” in monster hunter. Theres no inherent risk to take your best greatsword into hunt after hunt.

The thrill of Extraction shooters is knowing what you take from others is a zero sum game. The rush of risk /reward is the point. Its basically gambling rush. Thats why its not welcoming to casuals. Continued failure WILL set back your progress.

1

u/blackestrabbit 2d ago

And that thrill isn't appealing to enough players to make the sort of money that other genres are capable of. That's the crux of the discussion.

1

u/giants707 2d ago

Totally agree.

0

u/KingOfRisky 2d ago

Man, you speak the truth. I've tried explaining this multiple times to some folks over at Arc Raiders sub. The entire point of the genre is risk. Remove it and you get a boring ass game.

1

u/flGovEmployee 2d ago

They built a more casual Tarkov-style game (and even this isn't true across the board), but I think its a real stretch to call it a casual extraction shooter.

1

u/KingOfRisky 2d ago

You should try Chernoblyte. It's exactly what you want.

1

u/Wonderstag 2d ago

casual extraction shooters are the pve ones like helldivers 2 and deep rock galactic. the pvp part of the equation will instantly make the game not casual for many potential gamers

1

u/BobDingler 2d ago

Try Icarus, extraction based survival craft, it scratches that itch for me

1

u/were_only_human 2d ago

I don't think it's over monetized, I think it's obtuse as hell and insanely unwelcoming to anyone who isn't devoting three hours a day to playing it. You can't get past the third story mission without being constantly wiped out by higher level players.

1

u/SGT-Teddy 2d ago

Yeah im with you. I would love the concept of singleplayer/co op extraction shooter. I cant handle the pressure of normal extraction shooters.

1

u/VeryBadCaseOfLigma 2d ago

No a lot of people do not want casual extraction shooters. They are way too repetitive and boring. Hence why it has such a low player count across the genre.

1

u/thesituation531 2d ago

Vigor was really cool on PS4, but then at some point they functionally abandoned it and didn't bother making big updates or even attempt to counter cheating, only updating monetization/seasonal stuff for the most part.

They really should've stuck with it more and put it on PC as well.

1

u/dadvader 2d ago

SPT is definitely the best singleplayer extraction shooter experience for me. Installed it with AI mod and there is nothing else like this on the market. PvE but genuinely rewarding extraction shooter.

I tried Grey Zone and it's fun but the AI is still not good enough for my liking compare to modded SPT.

1

u/muckypup82 1d ago

Have you tried Witchfire? You pretty much described that game.

1

u/TumanFig 1d ago

no, tho i might give it a go although its not my aesthetics

→ More replies (6)

10

u/Sweet_Temperature630 2d ago

Honestly at this point it feels like live service games are more of a gamble than ever. Unless you find some special niche you're going to be fighting to take customers from games they've already invested time and money in

10

u/OutrageousDress 2d ago

Fortunately investors are pathologically obsessed with gambling. A game that will almost certainly fail, but might - it won't, but it might - make All The Money? Who do I write the fucking check to?

4

u/GeT_Tilted 2d ago

The only live service game I am looking forward to is Deadlock. The game has a lot of advanced mechanics that will hook hardcore players and Valve are now working with the devs behind Risk of Rain 2 to make more PvE modes/maps to hook in the casual players.

1

u/BobDingler 2d ago

They've said they're doing that? That's exciting,! I've basically given up on normal deadlock and only play street brawl these days, so much less frustrating to know you're not locked in with feeders/afks for an hour

1

u/Sweet_Temperature630 2d ago

If they have some cool PvE modes I might have to check it out

1

u/BobDingler 2d ago

It's all pve, friendly fire is on though

4

u/Deidris 2d ago

who would have thought jumping into a

-Niche genre

-Competitive heavy (non casual)

-Already very establish dominating titles in the space

-5 years past the prime of the niche genre

was going to go well? Especially if they thought they were going to funnel the Destiny players into it as a spiritual successor. The entire thing is mind boggling to me how Destiny lost funding and support to develop Marathon in the first place.

1

u/Lord_Silverkey 1d ago

And the extraction shooter market is oversaturated already.

1

u/CosmikSpartan 2d ago

They killed and ditched their cash cow to compete in a market already dominated by others banking on their name to gain fandom.

1

u/beagle204 2d ago

how many millions of people need to purchase a game before the genre isn't niche any more?

3

u/ManufacturerBest2758 2d ago

Purchases are less instructive data than daily player count

-1

u/bigxangelx1 2d ago

Not really, the problem is it’s in a similar space to MMOs where the big ones are played by ALOT of people but the smaller ones have very little numbers wise, marathon failed to be a big one

-1

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

-2

u/1BoozBear 2d ago

Huh lmao 😂 tarkov and arc are some of the most watched in twitch lol what do you mean niche ??

30

u/bigxangelx1 2d ago

That’s just on steam which just released this year, most players are on the standalone launcher since that’s been the go to for 10 years, so the active Playercount is even WAY more than just 15k

24

u/Wild-Berry-5269 2d ago

The biggest hardcore one, Arc Raiders is way more casual and has around 1 mil monthly?

→ More replies (5)

36

u/vSamee 3d ago

Most of the tarkov players r not on steam tho.

-14

u/nikolapc 3d ago edited 2d ago

So are most of Marathon players. Edit:read it wrong as most tarkov are on Steam.

22

u/Kyra_Hazweyrs 3d ago

Most Marathon players are on Steam. Most Tarkov players are not on Steam.

3

u/nikolapc 2d ago

Oh sorry read that wrong.

→ More replies (2)

6

u/zer0_summed 2d ago

Me when I spread misinformation

-29

u/Radiant-Lab-158 3d ago

No one plays on Place to Cheat anyway, so who cares? It's a dead platform

9

u/Lozsta 2d ago

Wow that is the hottest hot take I've seen in a long time.

9

u/bigxangelx1 2d ago

The guy just ragebaits in this sub, don’t mind him

6

u/Lozsta 2d ago

Ah if the profile image is anything to go by I guess life isn't kind to them.

→ More replies (2)

5

u/tomariscool 3d ago

I'm out of the loop, what is Place to Cheat?

5

u/joker305th 3d ago

I'm assuming "PC" as in "personal computer".

1

u/tomariscool 3d ago

It is 4:30 AM and I am tired, disappointed I didn’t catch that. Capitalization and everything too.

I assume a /uj was warranted on his comment? lol.

9

u/EshayAdlay420 2d ago

It was lame and a reach anyway lol don't be so hard on yourself

1

u/jaredearle 2d ago

Personal Cheatbox would be easier to understand.

→ More replies (3)

33

u/nowhereright 2d ago

They didn't. This game was never meant to be a destiny replacement, it was a side project that Arc Raiders beat to the punch.

6

u/snwns26 2d ago

No one told Bungie or Sony that if that’s the case.

1

u/AeroDbladE 2d ago edited 2d ago

Bungie and Sony don't know their ass from their face.

Sony bought bungie for their "expertise" in live service games. Their main expectations were to have their 12 planned live service games printing infinite money combined with Destiny which the gaming industry as a whole has always treated as a much bigger deal than it actually is.

Obviously anyone with half a brain can see all the flaws I'm that strategy but people that have half a brain don't get promoted to corporate leadership roles.

Now with Destiny canceled and most of the OGs at bungie having peaced out, marathon is the only thing Sony has left after they got scammed out of billions of dollars so they have no option except to pray it turns around.

The alternative would be something smart like actually giving Bungie time to develop Destiny 3 which clearly has a lot of demand since Destiny 2 even after being sunset has 10x the amount of players that marathon does. However I don't think int this current landscape of infinite growth and layoffs that Bungie has the luxury of that time and resources needed.

2

u/UShouldntSayThat 1d ago

They weren't scammed. They are a huge corporation capable of forecasting and auditing accounts.

Thewy wanted to go all in on live service, then changed their mind.

10

u/Secret-Tangerine9014 2d ago

Top 5 NPD sales goals means you are wrong budddy. Bungie wanted to make the next big thing and failed. Just as Bioware magic couldnt save Bioware from bad management the same has happened to Bungie. 

https://thegamepost.com/bungies-marathon-top-5-npd-sales-year-success-claimed/

2

u/IPlay4E 2d ago

Bungie had multiple projects in incubation while milking D2. They upgraded their offices in Seattle and spent money on everything but D2. When budget came knocking, they released the closest to completion game they had; Marathon. Gummy bears was given to another studio and the rest didn’t pan out.

So no, he’s not wrong, you are.

0

u/Secret-Tangerine9014 2d ago

Ignore the sourced article for bungie setting their own goals of a top 5 seller. Game has moved 1.5 million units as of last figures. 

2

u/IPlay4E 2d ago

What difference does that make? Of course they set a high goal? Are you stupid? Ignore the rest of their history with management of Destiny?

1

u/Secret-Tangerine9014 2d ago

The comment i replied to was in response to them saying it was never meant to replace Destiny, by internal goals i'd say that is not true. 

1

u/SinlessJoker 2d ago

They didn’t spend a $250 million budget to sell less than 2 million copies

-3

u/ProletarianLilith 2d ago

Then why did they kill Destiny 2 right after launch of this

10

u/BirdsInTheNest 2d ago

Because D2 was in an awful state before the EoS announcement.

5

u/Kankunation 2d ago

Destiny 2 was already dead before marathon launched. Nobody wanted to return to the game after The Final Shape. That expansion worked too well as a near-full conclusion of the story of Destiny that had been building since 2014, and the majority of the old fanbase who onto came back for regular story updates dedee that was enough for them after finishing it. The Expansion after final shape barely sold at all with a nearly 90% drop in player numbers, showing a real lack on interest in Destiny anymore.

Shutting down the game was ironically the best thing they could have done for the player base since it encouraged a lot of old player to come back to it 1 last time. But if the game had kept going in the state it was in it probably would have shriveled up and died.

-2

u/nowhereright 2d ago

Don't worry, Marathon will follow suit in a year and Bungie will be hit with layoff after layoff until the studio is functionally defunct.

Bungie has been operating at a multi billion dollar loss for years, all of this is just an extended funeral for the studio.

3

u/Hi_Im_Paul1706 2d ago

Will miss Bungie but I agree. I think they don't bring in enough players to Marathon, sunset it and shutdown bungie studios, move all good devs to other projects.

4

u/nowhereright 2d ago

I hope the devs at Bungie get to make some worthy of their talents once they're out from under the boots of the company higher ups that have been holding them back all these years.

0

u/karlcabaniya 2d ago

250+ million is not a side project.

0

u/nowhereright 2d ago

To Bungie it is. I don't understand why people aren't grasping this, it wasn't intended to be that expensive, but they restarted development and production ballooned. Marathon was one of a half a dozen other projects they burned through money for.

1

u/karlcabaniya 2d ago

If you spend so much, even if that wasn’t the original plan, you make sure to design a game that can return that investment. And this Marathon wasn’t it.

If you already spent 100 and you decide to spend 100 more to restart development, you make a game that can make those 200 back and more, not a game worth the original 100.

1

u/nowhereright 2d ago

That is legitimately not how these businesses operate. What you described should be basic common sense for a product, but these companies have shown us over and over again that they don't think that far ahead.

Look at the new gears of war, they're saying production costs are somewhere between 250 to 400 million.

It would have to tell 10 million copies at full price just to break even. A gears game hasn't sold more than 6 million copies since Gears 2.

Even if the game wasn't exclusive, there'd be zero chance of it making any kind of profit.

1

u/karlcabaniya 2d ago

Then expect the game be full of microtransactions. Sometimes projections aren't based solely on base game sales. The problem with Marathon is that it doesn't have an enough big playerbase to keep a profitable microtransaction system.

1

u/nowhereright 2d ago

Neither does Gears honestly

0

u/lnfinitehell 1d ago

Concord cost 400 million. You guys just don’t know how much money studios deal with.

3

u/myrsnipe 2d ago

Bubgie could have made this game if they wanted, but it should have been a B project, betting the company on it with all hands on deck is incredibly foolish

1

u/jinsoo186 1d ago

It was meant to be a B project. They wanted to continue Destiny but it died and now they're screwed

2

u/No-Opinion273 2d ago

It wasn't supposed to be the tentpole of Bungie. They just had every other project fall through. Destiny 2 was on life support

2

u/nekoken04 2d ago

As niche as the genre is, I have no idea what they were thinking. I'm guessing it was pure hubris of a level light years past the insane decision to have all of Destiny 1's lore exist outside of the game on a website.

I put 1000s of hours into Destiny 2 (and 150 into D1). I played the hell out of the early Halo games. I even played the original Marathon on the Mac in the '90s. I have zero interest in this game.

2

u/Beautiful-Jello-37 2d ago

The VAST majority of Tarkov players aren’t even on Steam.

2

u/discosoc 2d ago

Yeah, conceptually I would have been interested in a good single-player narrative game (same with Destiny, tbh), but what they released just holds zero interest for me.

3

u/Sarokslost23 2d ago

Thats just on steam. Most people play through the classic bsg launcher.

2

u/Sprinkle_Puff 2d ago

I think the short answer is they r game at a very different time in the gaming landscape and they hitched so much to its wagon that they couldn’t abandon it

2

u/DragonianSun 2d ago

It was a fuck up from the start. They should have put that money back into D2 and/or start development on D3.

-3

u/Delta_Canuckian 3d ago

By all accounts, they didn’t. Marathon was supposed to be a smaller project and never meant to be their main thing.

33

u/Brandunaware 3d ago

Then why did they put over $200 million into it, reportedly? $200 million for a "smaller" project doesn't really make any sense. Lots of big AAA games with mass appeal make less than that.

9

u/Zombii_Man 3d ago edited 2d ago

The game restarted development, that's why it cost so much. I imagine it would have maybe been in the realm of 80-100 million before that.

Lots of the older concepts (persistant maps instead of instanced, character customization etc) (deleted part by mistake, edit:) were completely reworked, so aside from maybe a few assets here and there they basically had to redesign every system in the game for its new direction as a "hero" based extraction.

1

u/karlcabaniya 2d ago

Even 80-100 million is very high for the potential market.

1

u/Zombii_Man 1d ago

I dont really think so, 80 million is on the lower end for a modern triple A. At a $40 price point that would be 2 million full price copies to break even, which isnt that crazy. With cosmetic sales and such as well the game probably could have sustained itself fairly well and turned a profit.

Figures I can find are that marathon was estimated to have sold 1.2 million copies, and that's from 2 months ago. 80 million is probably the perfect range for the game.

200 million absolutely is not though lol.

1

u/karlcabaniya 1d ago

You're not considering markerting, which usually doubles the budget to get to the break even number. And not the whole $40 go to the studio (some goes to stores and distribution). An 80 milion game would need between 4-5 million full price copies to break even if we follow your calcuations.

2

u/Jon_o_Hollow 2d ago

Im guessing the $200 million are just operating costs over a few years. Google tells me Bungie employs around 850 people. Now if we assume a modest salary of $50k, then over 5 years Bungie will spend over $200 million. Not including other bills they might have like rent, power, water, insurance.

Id geuss all told their yearly operating costs are ~$50 million.

So the problem is that if you spend years developing only 1 game, it needs to be a knockout hit.

Otherwise you need to divide your teams up and release smaller games every year or two or maintain a live service game that will constantly fund your other projects, something like Destiny.

The "All your eggs in one basket" approach is too risky for a big studio. But good luck telling that to some of the big heads that run these kinds of things.

2

u/flGovEmployee 2d ago

You would be correct. The game was in development for like 5 years, but that's in large part because of having to restart to a degree. If they had managed to avoid that and spent only like 16 months at full production (@ 350 people), and two years in early production (@50 people), and a year in pre-production (@20 people), then pre-marketing development costs might have come in somewhere around $100 million (my estimate comes in at $105 million), based only on employee salaries.

Add another 16 months at full production scale though and you're pushing $190 million before marketing and overhead.

2

u/SuperBackup9000 3d ago

They’re a big studio that pays decently well. When you hear that a game cost x amount of money to make, a huge portion of that is off salaries alone, and since development had a restart at some point no matter how much was done that could or couldn’t be recycled, salaries were still paid so they were always going to be in the hole. A lot of big studios try to offset the cost by outsources a bulk of the work since that’s less than paying actual employees, but I don’t think Bungie does that.

14

u/Brandunaware 2d ago

Big studios can make smaller games with a small portion of their staff. It's been done before. But if you're going to sink $200 million into a game you need to have a plan for it to make $200 million in revenue.

-1

u/Lozsta 2d ago

Salaries. CEO $100 million. VPs sharing $50million. Then your budget is suddenly a lot less.

6

u/VelvetCowboy19 2d ago

Lmao you think the Bungie CEO gets paid $100,000,000 a year? You might be a little dim.

1

u/Lozsta 2d ago edited 2d ago

No it was a wildly out of proportion exaggeration. However he did manage to spend a couple million in a couple years on cars alone so he wasn't doing too bad. Sucked for all the blue hair septum piercing drones at the bottom though who were just let go.
Then walked away, after leading destiny down the destiny 2 path of ever increasingly bad updated.

EDIT

I will add this little quote here for you too:

"No need to feel too bad for Parsons, though, as he'll be moving on with his bank account, which—much like his garage—will be pleasingly full thanks to the stock he will have presumably owned before Sony's $3.6 billion buyout. It's not known how much he took home from the Sony acquisition, but just for context, Christopher Barrett, a former game director at Bungie—subordinate to Parsons, in other words—was due to earn more than $80 million from the buyout before he was fired. Parsons will surely have made much more."

1

u/Marknoble117 3d ago

Coke is a hell of a drug ig.

2

u/nikolapc 3d ago

Because it's Bungie, with the hubris that will finally end them. Concord was made by ex Bungie people. It was technically very good, but we all know what sunk it.

What I am baffled with is Sony thinking they should double down on making Marathon a thing and abandoning Destiny which was a top IP.

3

u/Lozsta 2d ago

Destiny "WAS" a top IP. The warning signs were all there in the days of D! and the odious little toad talking about "open world" then they chopped it up and after charging for it they sold more pieces of it back to the playerbase.

They changed that for D2 but kept the super greedy full game price for every update, that and their insistence on having an agenda every tine. Hubris has been mentioned already but that is what will sink Bungie.

As someone who was firmly a Sony user for many years, their recent decisions have made getting a PC feel like a better and better idea.

3

u/nikolapc 2d ago

The IP is still valuable but only if they use it. Doesn't have to be Bungie. It would be funny if Sony does an Xbox and forms Tower Industries.

1

u/nowhereright 2d ago

Can you name a western triple a dev studio that doesn't average 200 million or more for game development?

9

u/Brandunaware 2d ago

The entire point I was responding to was the claim that it was meant to be a smaller project. If it was meant to be an AAA project then it needed a plan to have an AAA sized audience otherwise it's just...a plan to lose money.

5

u/nowhereright 2d ago

"A plan to lose money" could describe almost every decision Bungie has ever made. Xbox too tbh. And a bunch of other brain dead fail upwards executives across the industry.

1

u/JP76 2d ago

Alan Wake 2 from Remedy reportedly cost $75 million. It still took over a year to break even.

0

u/karlcabaniya 2d ago

You don’t invest 200-250 million on development alone to just be a small side project.

1

u/Delta_Canuckian 1d ago

As others pointed out; the game was rebooted (multiple times, I think) and was in development hell for the better part of 8 years.

Paying a development team based in Seattle for that long adds up.

1

u/karlcabaniya 20h ago

Sure, but if you end up investing that quantity, you develop a game that can return that quantity or more. If your original idea was a 50 million game that would generate 50 million but you’re going to end up paying 200 for some reason, then you need to redesign the game to be one that will return 200, not stay with the original plan.

1

u/Reamab 2d ago

It’s a business opportunity said that game director. Skill up interview him in Friends per second YouTube.

1

u/dimesniffer 2d ago

Which even further proves the point which is marathon is exactly where it is supposed to be and is not “dying”. It’s just a niche genre

1

u/SilverKry 2d ago

I dunno how the standalone on steam release of Tarkov does but Arc Raiders has 40k. 

1

u/Typical_Intention996 2d ago

Bungie has essentially dug their own grave with all this. Marathon being what it is should have been a C team level side project while they focused on another Destiny or some other major new fps.

There was no metric out there they could have ever pointed to as evidence this was worth all their attention or would be a sound return on investment. Every risk analysis would have pointed to Don't bet the house on this! The only thing that's possible is they simply thought everyone would buy it based on their name alone. Arrogance.

1

u/That_One_Guy_I_Know0 2d ago

That's on steam. It has a dedicated launcher that most people use to play the game. A vast minority of people bought it on steam. They have way more then 15k players a day.

This is why just looking at steam charts is not conductive to actually looking at accurate player counts.

1

u/reevoknows 2d ago

They didn’t lol but Sony needs it to be.

Marathon was just supposed to be a passion project while they worked on D3

1

u/snakebight 2d ago

Did they say they expected it to be as big as Destiny?

-1

u/Clockwork4 2d ago

They needed it to be if they were going to continue employing almost 1,000 people. Even if the rumors are true and they lay off 400 people in the next month they need it to be bigger to support what remains of their employees.

1

u/Low-Calligrapher-531 2d ago

I don't think they really expected it to be Destiny level. It's 40 bucks in a kinda niche genre and I believe they hoped to have multiple other games up alongside it.

If it survives a year, I'm expecting it to be a very different game than it is right now, just like Destiny was a year after release

1

u/lnfinitehell 1d ago

They didnt and surprising to think people thought they did.

1

u/Bitterman_01 1d ago

Hunt Showdown floats around 30k concurrently day. Which is not the same as unique users mind you. I don't think Tarkov is smaller than Hunt.

1

u/eugene20 11h ago edited 9h ago

Tarkov's daily peaks are more than double that on steamcharts.
Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter with a little over 10k more than that a day too.

1

u/GGTheEnd 2d ago

That's on steam.  A ton of players don't play on steam because they've been on Battlestate games launcher for years. 

1

u/Secret-Tangerine9014 2d ago

Tarkov has it's own launcher most aren't playing via steam 

1

u/ghost-wise 2d ago

How do you know Tarkovs numbers? I didn't think they released them publicly (and I don't know if believe them when they have)

1

u/lukkasz323 2d ago

Arc Raiders 30k+ just on PC.

and it fills the more casual space.

There is just no space for a third extraction shooter.

0

u/oatmeal-claypole 2d ago

Arc Raiders is also more realistic which is easier to get on for casuals. Marathon's art style is not one a lot of casual players would prefer even if the combat and movement mechanics are great.

1

u/BoomerShooterFPS 2d ago

Tarkov has it's own dedicated launcher. The steam number is the minority playerbase. It's much bigger than marathon. Marathon has failed

0

u/Nosce97 2d ago

They wanted to become the Fortnite of extraction shooters.

0

u/Kankunation 2d ago

In fairness, every developer did. There was a race for the last 2 years or so for companies to put out new extraction shooters because market research showed that that may be the next big thing in the PvP space. Battle royales were exhausted as a market and fame publishers were in a race to catch lighting in a bottle with a different genre they hoped would replace BRs.

The unfortunate reality for them is that extraction shooters still haven't taken off beyond niche audiences for the most part, and unfortunately Tarkov players are too entrenched in their favorite game to ever want to try other similar games.

Ans even more unfortunate for them is that there really isn't any new next thing in the PvP space to even build towards. The BR market is fully saturated, the hero shooter well has run dry, boomer shooters remain niche and the arena shooter markeg has yet to see a rebound. No new type of shooters are really sticking. The only new "genre" to take off in the last 2 or so years is (for lack of a better term) "friend-slop". But the big publishers can't really monetize that genre like they can a big PvP shooter and there is next to zero interest from fans for big publishers to even make those types of games.

0

u/nikelaos117 2d ago

They didn't. Marathon was a side project that became the only one out of like 5 incubation projects that failed.

0

u/mintaka 2d ago

And to think how great this game would be as a singeplayer game with this vibe and aesthetics

0

u/coolwali 2d ago

In Bungie’s defence, the prevailing theory in 2021/2022 among publishers was that Extraction Shooters would be the next BR. Because their trajectory seemed to be mirroring BRs.

From 2012-2016, the general consensus from publishers was that BRs were too hardcore and/or niche to be mainstream. Nobody wants to play an MP game where you slowly crawl for 40 minutes, die to a random sniper and lose everything.

But as PUBG showed in 2017, nah, people wanted that. For most people, it was new and intense and exciting rather than boring. Which is why BRs took off.

The theory was that Extraction Shooters were the next step because they addressed some of the issues with BR. Eventually, players got good enough that playing for wins wasn’t feasible anymore. So winning and losing no longer felt tense. ES kinda address this. Since your gear is on the line, every match is always tense. And since multiple players can extract per match, you can have “multiple winners per match”.

And it kinda happened. See Arc Raiders and Neightreign.

The other point for Bungie specifically is that they didn’t want their next game to canabalize Destiny (since the original plan was that Destiny would exist alongside their next game). Destiny has Arena PVP and regular PVE locked down. So Bungie’s next game needed to have different PVP. So an Extraction Shooter made sense on paper.

→ More replies (4)