Bungie’s live-service gamble Marathon has seen mixed results since it released last month. With an initially acceptable launch weekend, players have slowly been dropping ever since, despite positive reception. Now though, for the first time since launch, Marathon‘s player count over the last weekend fell below 30,000 concurrent players on Steam.
It’s normal for games to have lower player counts on weekdays as gamers focus on their work, school or families. Weekend however is the prime time for gaming, and also sees Marathon‘s highest weekly player peaks. Since its March 5 launch, Marathon was consistently able to keep over 30,000 concurrent Steam players at the weekends – until now.
The peak for the weekend was a little over 28,000 players on Saturday. This is a 68% drop from its launch weekend high of 88,000 players, and an 80% drop from the peak of the Marathon Server Slam Open Beta which saw over 143,000 concurrent players.
The issue of Marathon‘s declining player count isn’t just found in the numbers though, as players are turning to Reddit to share their woes of losing friends willing to play the game with them. A hugely popular post on the dedicated Marathon subreddit is being flooded with stories of dedicated players sharing tales of their teams who have stopped playing the games, and the reasons why.
It might not all be bad though. According to a report from Forbes, the developers at Bungie are committed to keeping the game going with new content, and ignoring the slew of negativity online regarding the game’s player count. This is likely the best approach, as live service games always have the chance to pivot if they can make changes that will resonate with their players and draw in new ones.
For the time being, Marathon is keeping up the sprint. Even with declining players, those that are still engaged seem to be in it for the long haul. Season 2 is set to begin in June, with a new Runner shell, map variant and more. Time will tell how players will respond to the coming updates, and how Bungie will respond to Marathon‘s player base.
