Latest news with #extractionShooter
Digital Trends
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Marathon has been delayed indefinitely after rocky Alpha playtest
After hosting an Alpha playtest and taking in community feedback, Bungie has announced that Marathon will no longer be launching on September 23 as was originally planned. Currently, the extraction shooter has no set release date, but the team is committed to hosting more playtests to address community concerns and add new features. The official Bungie news post breaks the news that the development team has made the difficult choice to delay Marathon, but does not give another timeframe for when we can expect the game to launch. The reasons appear to be based on player feedback, as the post reads, 'Through every comment and real-time conversation on social media and Discord, your voice has been strong and clear. We've taken this to heart, and we know we need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion. After much discussion within our Dev team, we've made the decision to delay the September 23rd release.' Recommended Videos It isn't all bad news, however. The dev team outlines a clear roadmap of what it plans to improve or add over the coming months to make Marathon as good as possible. Some highlights include new types of loot and dynamic events on runs, adding more narrative elements to interact with in the world that more closely match the original lore, a better solo player experience, and proximity chat. The post concludes stating that we will hear more about progress on Marathon sometime this Fall, which is also when a new release date is promised. This heavily implies that the game will be pushed into 2026, but we will wait for full confirmation from the team in a few months. Marathon was met with a mixed reception when it debuted its gameplay and hosted an Alpha test earlier this year. Despite never announcing a price, many were already hesitant that it wouldn't be worth the asking price based on what was shown. For now, it seems like Bungie is taking all that feedback seriously and doing its best to make Marathon a hit when it does finally come out. Whether or not that comes to pass, however, is yet to be seen.
The Verge
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Bungie delays Marathon after alpha test feedback
Bungie announced Tuesday that it's delaying Marathon, its new extraction shooter that had been set for a September 23rd release date. The studio isn't providing a new release date just yet, though has promised to share it sometime this fall. The studio outlined a few 'immediate focus areas' for the game. It plans to make AI encounters 'more challenging and engaging' and make combat 'more tense and strategic.' It's 'doubling down on the Marathon Universe' by increasing 'visual fidelity,' including 'more narrative and environmental storytelling,' and will introduce a 'darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy.' (Bungie may also be making these visual changes after an artist said the company lifted her artwork without permission.) And it plans to add 'more social experiences,' including proximity chat and improving things for solo and duo players. 'We're using this time to empower the team to create the intense, high-stakes experience that a title like Marathon is built around,' according to the post. 'This means deepening the relationship between the developers and the game's most important voices: our players.'
Gizmodo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Sony is Still Putting Its Faith in ‘Marathon'
Bungie's Marathon is still coming out, and when it does, PlayStation plans on giving the extraction shooter a fair shot. During a recent investor interview, Sony Interactive Entertainment head Herman Hulst assured the game would come out before March 31, 2026, when Sony's fiscal year ends. Touching on its recent alpha test, he descbied the feedback as 'varied, but super useful. […] The constant testing, the constant re-validation of assumptions that we just talked about, to me is just so valuable to iterate and to constantly improve the title, so when launch comes, we're going to give the title the optimal chance of success.' Hanging over PlayStation is 2024's sci-fi shooter Concord, which shut down weeks after launch and later led to developer Firewalk Studios closing down. That's been just one of several botched attempts from PlayStation's attempts to enter live-service games, which includes several canceled projects and layoffs across its first-party studios. While acknowledging these 'unique challenges' and attributing Concord's failure to the 'hypercompetitive market' of hero shooters, Hulst talked up how they're avoiding the same mistakes with Marathon. 'It's going to be the first new Bungie title in over a decade, and it's our goal to release a very bold, very innovative, and deeply engaging title. We're monitoring the closed alpha cycle the team has just gone through. We're taking all the lessons learned, we're using the capabilities we've built and analytics and user testing to understand how audiences are engaging with the title.' One thing Hulst didn't touch on, though, was the recent accusations of art plagiarism levvied against Bungie. In May, artist Fern 'Antireal' Hook released evidence alleging the studio stole assets she made from previous work and failed to credit her. After investigating, Bungie attributed the theft to the work of a former employee, publicly apologized, and said it would do 'everything we can to make this right' with Hook. It also promised to review all in-game assets and replace 'questionably sourced' art with original, in-house work. With the mention of its arriving before the fiscal year ends, Marathon may be delayed out of its current September 23 launch. At time of writing, Bungie and PlayStation have kept mum on a potential delay, but the game failed to make an appearance at PlayStation's recent State of Play in early June. [via IGN]
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Sony Touts ‘Strong' Marathon Engagement, Confirms Release Window
Marathon The future of Marathon after the last month or so feels rather unsteady, but in a new SIE presentation, Sony is reinforcing that it's an important game in its lineup, and it's projecting confidence. Sony's Herman Hulst took some time during his overview of PlayStation's offerings to single Marathon out as 'an innovative and bold take on the extraction shooter genre.' This was joined by a slide that under the banner 'FY25 Focus,' which said that there is 'Strong early engagement for Bungie's bold and innovative new title.' Marathon If you've been following the saga of Marathon, all this is a bit eyebrow-raising. For starters, at least the presentation reinforces a window for Marathon, Fiscal Year 2025, in a time when most players believe it will be delayed out of its current September 23, 2024 release date. FY25 ends in March 2026, so it would not be something huge like a year delay. Even six months is pushing it, so if there is one, it would not be all that long, and you would wonder what might be able to be changed or fixed in that time. That leads to the next aspect of this, this supposed 'strong engagement.' Sure, there's been strong engagement, but that consists of a lot of negativity about its gameplay reveal, then an overwhelming sense that the Closed Alpha was underwhelming, then an industry-wide scandal where it was revealed that plagiarized art had made it through the game's pipeline over a number of years and had ended up in the game itself. So yes, there was 'engagement.' FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Either Sony is completely divorced from the online conversation surrounding Marathon, or they see where things are headed and feel forced to project strength regardless. Saying nothing about Marathon or waffling on it here would do nothing to help them or the game so of course, yes, you say you believe in the game, even if you're dancing around what's actually happening by bragging about 'engagement.' But internally, even Bungie is extremely concerned about where things are, and where things are going from here. Live services The chart of Sony's live service prospects is bleak. There's no real getting around that. It considers its eternal baseball game, The Show, a live service. Destiny 2 has been bleeding players and is now entering a very risky new era that seems unlikely to return the game to its glory days. Marathon is on the edge of oblivion at this point. It's hilarious they're even saying Fairgames is still actually coming out. The unequivocal bright spot here is Helldivers 2, which has been true since it launched. But its developer, Arrowhead, will not be working with Sony for its next game. Over the course of the past two months, I have arrived at the conclusion that Marathon is just not going to work. The vibes are awful, the problems with the game are mostly etched in stone, and now we have an art theft scandal on top of that. I do expect a delay to be announced, but it won't be lengthy, and I do not believe this is going to be the release that both Sony and Bungie need, whatever they're saying in their slideshow. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
It's Just Over For ‘Marathon'
Marathon I've tried to put this off for a while now, giving Marathon the benefit of the doubt in terms of fixing what ails it, and maybe snagging an audience that's large enough to make it at least sustainable. But no, it's over. I can't dispute this anymore. This has probably always been true, but the events of the past week have cemented it. I will get into the livestream and plagiarism and all that later, but this is a long, long list of what's gone wrong in the past, what's currently going wrong, and a future that does not look any brighter. The entire idea of this game was a mistake. Bungie has said that this came from a bunch of them playing Tarkov a while ago, and I heard that among that group, it was one 'good old boy' in leadership who pushed to make this Bungie's biggest non-Destiny project, and hopefully the birth (well, rebirth) of a strong IP for the studio, now under Sony which assumed it would produce another hit like this. The game attempts to split the difference between casual players who may be new to extraction shooters and existing, hardcore extraction players it would like to pilfer from games like Tarkov. It will do neither. You are never going to make an extraction shooter that is casual enough, because the concept of being able to lose your loot, potentially your entire vault if you go on bad runs, is exhausting as you try to give the game and genre a chance. Add onto that losing all that gear and all the upgrades you've gotten in a season no matter what, and that may be how this genre is, but it's just not going to be attractive to many players that have not already played this genre. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder It's probably even worse on the hardcore player end, with Tarkov players scoffing at how 'easy' they've made Marathon, everything from gear looting to time-to-kill to double revives on combat. I've seen almost no established extraction shooter players that are eager to jump over to Marathon for anything but a trial run based on what they've seen and played. Marathon And what we've seen and played is the next point. Neither are good. Either you've been an outside observer watching gameplay trailers and Twitch streams, or you got into the Closed Alpha and played for yourself. The game feels uninspired. Shooting is…fine, but considering this is Bungie, a studio that gave us some of the best-feeling shooters of all time, this is not close to comparing to that. It feels like a slower version of Apex Legends with maybe one teamfight per round, and in between, battling with UESC bots (which I do think can actually be fun in some instances). The idea that this is an extraction shooter that should use a hero model has not landed well at all. It seems woefully unbalanced with full invisibility and wallhacks and things that should just not be in this genre. And it destroys the idea of making a fully custom character like other games, something most players like. It feels like a solution where a problem did not exist. An experiment to make the game stand out, but it's just made it worse. None of this was helped that at the exact same time, Marathon's Alpha was interrupted by an ARK Raiders Alpha, a much more traditional extraction shooter and a much better one, by all accounts. More polished, more fun, more expected features found in extraction shooters. All you have to do is look at the fact that ARK Raiders' playercount went up every single day of its Alpha where Marathon's almost always went down. By the end, it was sub-20% of what it started with. Twitch viewers were even worse, going from 150,000 at launch as big streamers tried it, crashing to 1-3,000 a few days later near the end, where big chunks of that might even be one or two Destiny streamers alone. Marathon It's not just how the game currently feels and plays, it's what it's apparently planning for the future. This was half the problem with the recent livestream where sure, the vibes were bad with the recent plagiarism from the start, but hearing game director Joe Ziegler and others talk about it, the constant refrain was 'we're looking about that, we're thinking about that.' The bulk of the talk was about minor balance changes. Shield health, backpack spawns, stack size, faction differentiation. Asked to name the biggest issue they found coming out of the Alpha, Ziegler rattled off a list of impossibly small issues. Hugely requested things like proximity chat and Solos were handwaved away and relegated to some possible future plan. It is absolutely insane that Bungie has not taken to heart the feedback about how this game feels to play Solo. It feels like the only way to play is stacked with friends on comms, as playing with randoms is at best a coinflip whether it's awful or fine. Going in Solo and skulking around like a rat avoiding all combat is boring as hell. Because the game ignores Solos, that means you need to convince two friends to buy it, likely at an upcoming $40 price point. It is too late in development to switch to free-to-play, not that this genre is built for that anyway, but painfully few people have played this game and thought it was worth that price. Without a delay, at launch, it will have two more heroes and 1-2 more maps and that's it. It's a tiny amount of content for that price, on top of a game that as of yet, is not very fun for most players. Now we arrive at the massive controversy of art theft, the revelation that a supposed ex-Bungie artist outright stole a large amount of art from ANTIREAL, an artist with a portfolio extremely similar to Marathon's vibes. And we're not talking 'inspired by,' these pieces of art are 1:1 rips to the point where Bungie has to audit its entire game to see how many of these there might be. During the livestream they couldn't even show the game because it was being ripped apart internally for this process. The Marathon comparison The narrative spread as players realized that a number of Bungie artists, including Art Director Joseph Cross, followed ANTIREAL for years. It's likely true that Marathon's overall style came from any number of sources from years or decades past, though this fact + the direct lifting from ANTIREAL exploded into theorizing that this was a larger problem (on my end too, for a time). But even if the entire 'soul' of Marathon wasn't taken from one artist, art director Joe Cross and members of his team allowed this massive portfolio of plagiarism to make it through from being stolen allegedly five years ago to being plastered all over the current build of the game. Mass incompetence. This has slit the throat of Marathon. The one thing Marathon had going for it was its unique art style and cool vibes, and now it will be impossible to bring that up without the plagiarism being referenced. Memes were instantly born during the apology portion of the livestream including 'PLAGIARISM WILL MAKE ME GOD' and a renaming of Marathon to 'ART Raiders.' That's going to stick forever. There is no escaping this now. Not that vibes were good before, but they are dismal now with Marathon a laughing stock after this happened or even worse, outright anger that this was allowed to take place in the game, and players refusing to play and support the game as a result. Marathon will not fundamentally change enough to be attractive to most players. Community sentiment will not change enough to turn things around on that end. A delay does not significantly change any of this, but it may be the only option. It would be impressively stupid to actually release this game in four months given both these recent events and that we're only seeing a small amount of new content and some balance and visual polishing for launch. But you simply cannot cancel this game at this point after 5+ years of work, even if it should have died ages ago. Sony alone would never allow that. A delay is the only real option but I don't think it changes enough to be useful. It will create distance from the current awfulness, but I have seen nothing to indicate this is going to be some transformative rebirth. The core concept of a hero shooter extraction game will not change. It will not erase the plagiarism that happened. Marathon I've previously said that Marathon will not be Concord 2.0. While I still technically believe that, it's more a matter of just how brutally this will fail, not whether it will fail at all. I do not expect it to get 700 concurrent Steam players like Concord, nor be scrapped in two weeks by Sony. But it will not do well. That is set in stone right now barring some sort of miracle from the heavens. This will hurt Bungie and its actual healthy child, Destiny. There will be layoffs. There will be Sony takeover of leadership as they bail out with millions in vested cash. The only thing I don't believe will happen is the complete dissolution of Bungie as that would be a bridge too far in terms of Sony being embarrassed a storied brand has collapsed under its tenure, one they paid $3.6 billion for. And I also think it would be a horrible look to immediately kill another game like they did with Concord, and Marathon will be given some time to fix and improve things. I don't think any amount of time will be enough. I realize this is an utterly brutal article. It's the longest one I've written in ages. But at this point there is no doubt the writing is on the wall and it is disingenuous to ignore that. I will continue to cover the game. If good things happen, I will write about that. If bad things keep happening, I will write about that. But I think it's overwhelmingly bad things from here. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
