Marathon was poised for a strong start to its second season, with a long list of major new features and quality-of-life changes. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone according to plan. The rollout of its first seasonal patch led to widespread server issues before the game was taken offline for several hours of unscheduled maintenance.
Bungie’s extraction shooter underwent its first reset yesterday, putting players back to square one while introducing major UI updates, a new character class, additional weapons, a spooky map, and dozens of smaller balancing changes. On top of this, the game is currently running its first free-to-play week, with newbies able to try it from June 2 to June 9. These details were broadcast during Sony’s State of Play conference, setting up a potential slam dunk for Bungie, which needs some good news after it recently announced Destiny 2 is coming to an end alongside major layoffs. That’s not how it went down.
As the new season began at 1 p.m. EDT, players started experiencing various animal-themed error messages that kicked them out of active games. Players posted depressing videos where they snagged incredibly rare loot only for the servers to give out, sending their gold items into the void. By around 7 p.m., Bungie took down servers to deploy a fix, making the game unplayable. A little after 11 p.m., they seemed to get things working again.
In response to the issues, the company has promised to send out deluxe sponsored kits (pre-packaged loadouts) to those who logged in during the downtime, but the situation is still not great. Marathon has been subject to extreme scrutiny since it was announced, with many expecting (or cheering for) it to fail. It has apparently been the most searched game on SteamDB for months straight, reflecting a general obsession with the game’s concurrent player count and whether it will put Bungie in the crosshairs of a layoff-happy Sony. The news that Destiny 2 is coming to an end, with no sequel announced, hasn’t exactly helped the situation, and it seems likely that PlayStation is closely monitoring the game’s performance to decide the company’s future.
While ultimately, the server downtime isn’t a big deal when it comes to those who were going to check out season 2 anyway, first-time players who wanted to try the game out after seeing the slick trailer during State of Play might have already forgotten about it. The game’s active player count on Steam briefly spiked to its highest point since launch, only to be undercut by the bugs and downtime.
It’s a shame because many of the additions in the game’s second season seem quite neat. There’s a new progression system called The Cradle where players can assign stats to their shells. Upgrades like the ability to select multiple items at once have made it much easier to manage inventory on the fly, and balance changes have been added to help even out the playing field. The nighttime Dire March map looks like it will take the game’s horror undercurrents to a new extreme. And on top of all that, there are potential PvE and PvP-focused modes on the way.
While it’s clear that Bungie hasn’t remotely given up on the game, Marathon needs to capitalize on every opportunity it can get, given how tough the live-service market is these days. That isn’t what went down yesterday.
