A story from the Marathon subreddit about a player named Steve who reached level 45 by only killing robots is a new viral reminder of how lots of people actually play games. Steve spent a bunch of time in Bungie’s new shooter without ever extracting, grabbing loot, completing contracts, killing other players, or even buying upgrades.
Some suggest the story is a lie, that Marathon Steve is too absurd, too pure, to be a real person who exists in this world. But in addition to the video footage that’s been shared to back up the claim, I also believe Marathon Steve is real because he proves what game devs already understand: No tutorial is perfect. There’s always a Marathon Steve out there, playing their own and probably having a great time.
On June 29, Reddit user Carpocalypto posted about this “not serious gamer” friend Steve. According to the user, Steve is a 46-year-old man who bought Bungie’s online extraction FPS, Marathon, after a recent free weekend. Before that, he mostly played Madden and some Call of Duty. Steve had played the old Marathon games back on Mac and assumed that the point of this new one was to kill robots. That’s all Steve did in Marathon. That’s it. Like literally.
According to Steve’s friend, after they teamed up to play Marathon for the first time, the Reddit user learned that Steve had never extracted, “at least to his knowledge.” Steven had never completed a single quest or contract, collected any rewards, claimed a codex entry, and had only used free kits up to this point. He only played Destroyer, and while he knew it had a shield, he didn’t know about Destroyer’s rockets. Steve wasn’t even sure if another player had killed him or if he had killed another player. He also assumed his vault, which normally holds all your loot, was a trophy case filled with items he collected from robots. Steve had never created a loadout.
Steve’s friend says the 45-year-old gamer’s mind was “blown” as they spent “about an hour going through the various menus, shells,” and other parts of Marathon. Throughout all of this, Steven apparently continued to say, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Now, after learning all about how Marathon works, Steve is now “at least aware of” most of the game’s systems. He plays Thief now and has reached level 52. With the help of his friend, Steve extracted a few times, killed some runners, and had a good time. He’s even extracted on his own, too.
Some online didn’t believe the Marathon Steve story, even after the original poster shared some video proof of Steve’s existence. But if you’ve played video games long enough or been around games for enough years, you knew Steve was a real dude.
Steve reminds me of a friend I knew who had no idea you could level up in an RPG (might have been Oblivion?) he was playing and just went around collecting stuff and fighting rats and other weak enemies because the big ones were “too hard.” Sounds terrible, but they enjoyed their life as a level 1 nobody in a fantasy world. You’d think a tutorial pop-up or message would have set him straight, but like Steve, for some people there is no amount of yellow paint or tutorializing that will get them on the right path. And that’s fine. People can enjoy games however they want.
Heck, I remember playing some shooter when I was younger and not realizing until very late that you could cook grenades, stealth kill people, or hold your breath while aiming. Sometimes you know a Steve. Sometimes you are Steve.
In some ways, I’m envious of Marathon Steve. I’ve not enjoyed Marathon as much in recent weeks as fewer players are hopping on and the ones who remain are very sweaty and deadly. My runs tend to end in frustration and failure. But Steve, he was having a blast just killing bots and having a grand old time doing it again and again.
I honestly feel a bit sad for Steve. His time with Marathon as a single-player PvE robot killin’ simulator is over now, and he’s on the same live-service shooter treadmill as all of us. It almost makes me sad. But then Steve’s friend posted the final text message he received after they played together, and it sounds like this new version of Marathon is treating Steve well, too:
“Bro. Exfilling while I’m mid-firefight with a huge amount of loot and still smoking fools is next to heaven!”
