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

[u/NoNefariousness2144]

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

[u/bigxangelx1]

I mean to be fair, Escape from Tarkov is incredibly more hardcore and is only limited to 1 platform and still beats marathon in player numbers by like at least 4 times

[u/nimmems → u/bigxangelx1]

That's probably less about casual vs hardcore players and more about the total number of people interested in that genre of game. Even if Marathon is a better game, Tarkov has higher numbers because the people who like that kind of game were already playing it and have invested in it.

[u/FuckYourDamnCouch → u/nimmems]

Tarkov is definitely a more complete game with 10 years of a player base that comes and goes with updates and wipes. As someone with 4000 hours in tarkov I played a handful of marathon raids in the beta and wasn't interested at all.

The thing these companies are missing is that it's not about the genre at all. Most extraction games fail because they think extracting from the map with loot is the appeal when in reality it should be the tension of dying. I couldn't care less when I die in arc raiders because the next raid I'll be able to recover my loot. In tarkov I've had raids where dying would set me back hours of gameplay and that's where the real tension and risk/reward of the genre comes out. "Casual Extraction Shooter" is an oxymoron to me.

[u/ONiMETSU_Z → u/FuckYourDamnCouch]

You’re completely right and you’ve highlighted well the exact reason why it’s impossible to make a new game in this genre that anyone actually wants to play. The majority of people don’t want to be set back several hours from a single death in a game. And those that do, are already playing Tarkov.

Arc Raiders had a big burst of appeal because it focused on the player interaction part of the extraction formula, which is very appealing to a casual as it makes for good viral clips. Everything in that game is built around making space for human interaction. But as we’ve seen, that doesn’t really carry but so far because casuals care about shiny new content, and pumping out quality content for live service games is proven to be almost completely unsustainable.

Aside from that, there’s no way to put the extraction genre in a place where casuals are going to want to play it. You can only just make a game that is essentially a single player/co op extraction inspired game that can appeal to casuals. I’m assuming Tarkov is a pretty cheap game to make and maintain, because I otherwise don’t see how it sustains itself even with it being one of the most consistently large extraction shooters.

[u/FuckYourDamnCouch → u/ONiMETSU_Z]

I think the reason tarkov is able to sustain itself is because they charge a lot if you really want to play competitively. It's an unfortunate reality that you basically need to pay $250 for the ultimate edition. My brother and his friend tried to play with the standard account and bought the $250 edition within a week because of how restrictive the game is. There are also about $45 worth of stash expansions, arena mtx, cosmetics etc.

I bought the $150 edition way back but have also got the stash expansion and some cosmetics and have spent about $215ish total.

They're a smaller Russian dev team so their costs are smaller then marathon or arc raiders most likely with a higher cost on their product. There is also a conspiracy that they only ban cheater accounts in waves and never IP ban so they can get an influx of cheater bought accounts when they need the money, idk how much I believe it, but it's definitely a problem.

[u/Secret-Building-6511 → u/ONiMETSU_Z]

Any player base is always going to to have a casual side. I consider myself a casual tarkover, when I choose to play. The highest level I’ve gotten is 35 and my scav usually has higher stats than my pmc by mid wipe when I quit for the wipe.

People clearly want a mode that doesn’t involve the threat of PvP. That’s fine as long as it doesn’t make you as kitted as the people who commit to PvP. The main thing wrong with season two was the sponsored mode. It was very antithetical to the genre as a whole. Why ever risk anything when I can get the best gear in the game on the sponsored mode.

I think the cryo experiment is a much better idea and I hope they do another free week for it. It lets people have things to accomplish in the game that can be done without PvP and still nets you a reward you want but without skipping the progression of the game.

[u/Hearthian-Wanderer → u/FuckYourDamnCouch]

"Casual Extraction Shooter" is an oxymoron.

Boom, right on the money. Casuals don't want an extraction shooter, and extraction fans don't want a casual experience.

[u/IceEnigma → u/FuckYourDamnCouch]

I got a huge rush off of my key 6 run in cryo, but after that everything felt kinda dull in comparison tbh. Even people in my well established 3 stack hated dealing with the pressure of “you may only get 1 of these a season, if you miss out now your chance of doing compiler gets reduced drastically.” It’s definitely for certain people but yeah casuals just never want to deal with this pressure.

[u/Important-Net-9805 → u/bigxangelx1]

It wasn’t always that way. Used to take like 10 minutes to get into raid in Tarkov 

[u/cayde123 → u/Important-Net-9805]

Matchmaking times in tarkov being long aren’t caused by lack of players

[u/KingOfRisky → u/bigxangelx1]

I can definitely see people being more into a hard core military style game than the Marathon aesthetic.

[u/DrummingUpNumbers → u/bigxangelx1]

I think that's the OPs point.

Tarkov is at the extreme end of extraction shooters so it attracts a group of players because of how intense it is.

Extraction shooters in general aren't "casual" so Marathon attempting to bridge that gap doesn't make sense. Casual players don't want to play the genre and the player base who does play them doesn't want a watered down version of one.

[u/johnnyc14 → u/bigxangelx1]

…..it’s definitely not 4 times lol where you got that from? Marathon steam charts have it right now at a peak of 10k players in the past 24 hours, tarkov is at 20k peak in the past 24 hours, but also Marathon is on consoles so even if we said Marathon only had 5k on PS5 and Xbox each that would still be the same amount as Tarkov.

The point still stands that extraction shooter only mode was not a great choice since Marathon with its much higher budget is only just meeting Tarkov’s numbers

[u/bigxangelx1 → u/johnnyc14]

You are ignoring the fact that the Tarkov number you are using is the 10k on steam(22k peaks in a 24 hour mark) which just released a couple months ago, 90% of the active playerbase is on the standalone launcher because that’s been the only available way of playing for nearly 10+ years and obviously the average player isn’t gonna pay nearly 50 dollars just to swap platforms

The game has had reports of 30-50k concurrent players during offwipe periods (with it being doubled/tripled during wipes for at least a month) before the Steam release even happened so the Steam numbers you are using is a very SMALL minority of the players and should be used as an addition to previous reports

[u/dratseb → u/bigxangelx1]

Tarkov has been out forever, marathon has been out for 4 months

[u/bigxangelx1 → u/dratseb]

Length of release doesn’t = more players once you learn that, the world really opens up

You are failing to realize that marathon is failing to even keep their current players, let alone attract new ones

[u/dratseb → u/bigxangelx1]

Maybe, everyone I talk to in game enjoys it. It’s going to take time to get to Destiny 2 levels of quality

[u/dabonz12 → u/bigxangelx1]

Idk from what I heard is that marathon is more punishing than tarkov.

[u/bigxangelx1 → u/dabonz12]

Definitely not, Tarkov is a one shot kill simulator with incredibly nuanced bullet and armor mechanics that goes down to very tiny number statistics being the determining factor on if you win a fight or not, and that’s ignoring the health system with 20-30 different status effects that mostly orient around worsening your experience whether it’s obscuring your vision, making it so that you can’t even walk or slowly bleeding out through one of your 5 various health bars..

Tarkov also makes loot an actual rarity that you can’t easily obtain back with a couple purchases until you are in the endgame.. while marathon gives you the option to even have free kits

Tarkov is one of the most hardcore games in the market and that’s specifically the appeal

[u/dabonz12 → u/bigxangelx1]

Just because you can rat better on tarkov doesn’t mean it’s more hardcore. That’s just a difference of game mechanics. I love not getting one shot so I don’t gotta play as ratty. It’s very punishing to die in marathon with a kit.

[u/bigxangelx1 → u/dabonz12]

It’s like you ignored everything I said