According to a recent report, the majority of developers at Bungie are now working on Marathon instead of Destiny 2. While Marathon is a new project for Bungie and one that the team obviously wants to see succeed, these new details may not sit well with the Destiny 2 playerbase.
Marathon isn’t the start of a new franchise for Bungie, but it is a return to a classic that hadn’t seen a new entry since 1996. The first-person extraction shooter has significant differences from Destiny 2, so gamers who have enjoyed Destiny 2‘s PvE experiences may not necessarily be interested in Marathon. While the two games have been worked on simultaneously leading up to Marathon‘s launch, Destiny 2 players have already voiced concerns that it could be taking focus away from Bungie’s older game. Now, it seems like those concerns may have some validity.
Marathon Packs All The Best Destiny 2 Features With One of Its Worst
Marathon shares many good features and gameplay aspects with Destiny 2, but it also seems not to cater to solo players.
Bungie Puts Bigger Focus on Marathon Development Over Destiny 2
Bungie sources speaking to Forbes have stated that Marathon has more developers working on it than Destiny 2. While an exact number wasn’t stated, there are estimated to be around 800 developers working at Bungie, with extraction shooter Marathon “edging out Destiny 2 by a bit” in terms of how many are working on the title. Reports from a year ago indicated that there had been a 300/550 split, with the majority working on Destiny 2, but that seems to have changed with the release of Marathon.
Fans of Destiny 2 aren’t taking this news well, as it indicates that fewer resources are being put into the game in favor of Marathon. Players were already sour when it was announced that the next major update for Destiny 2, Shadow and Order, was delayed to June 2026. However, more players are expressing disbelief that hundreds of team members are still working on Destiny 2 at Bungie, given the slowdown of updates. For a game that once had a thousand or more people working on it, though, it’s understandable that development would take longer with a workforce that’s been more than halved.
Unfortunately for Bungie, so far, its focus on Marathon hasn’t seen the kind of numbers that the developer might have expected following the success of the Destiny franchise. Marathon started out fairly strong with a peak of over 88,000 players on Steam, but has steadily declined since, with a peak of just 20,000 recorded on Friday, April 24. Even its Steam release peak is a far cry from Destiny 2 launching to nearly 300,000 players on the PC platform back in 2019. Despite the slowing updates and the game’s increasing age, Destiny 2 is still managing to hold on to about half of the playerbase that Marathon is commanding right now, with a little over 10,000 concurrent players recorded on the same day as Marathon‘s 20,000.
It’s still early days for Marathon, so it’s entirely possible that Bungie will see significant success with the extraction shooter as time rolls on. If that ends up meaning that Destiny 2 becomes largely abandoned, however, loyal Bungie fans may end up moving on entirely. Whether Destiny 2 can meet players’ expectations while Bungie simultaneously focuses on Marathon will become clearer as the Destiny 2: Shadow and Order release draws closer.
- Released
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March 5, 2026
- ESRB
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Teen / Animated Blood, Language, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op