Marathon‘s pre-launch server slam went live earlier today. Over 100,000 players immediately flocked to give Bungie’s new extraction shooter a try for free on PC and console. Naturally, they immediately tried to type “Arc Raiders,” the name of the game’s biggest genre rival, into chat. You’ll never guess what happened next.
Yes, Marathon censored the game name. Typing Arc Raiders into your squad’s group chat returned “*** *******” instead. One Twitch streamer’s clip showing the censorship has already started making the rounds online.
Kotaku‘s Zack Zwiezen is currently playing the Marathon beta as well and tested the game’s no–”Arc Raiders” filter a bit further. You can type “arc.” You can type “raiders.” You can type “arcraiders.” You can even type “arc raiders.” But you can cannot type “Arc Raiders.” Weird!
Even weirder, this isn’t the first time “Arc Raiders” has been censored in an online multiplayer shooter. The same thing happened with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 last fall, even though the rogue text filter issue was later patched out. EA was reportedly censoring 2025’s hit extraction shooter as well.
In Marathon‘s case, the genre rivalry is a bit more straightforward. The game’s success will depend in part on people taking a break from Arc Raiders‘ new season to loot robots on Tau Ceti IV instead. Shots were already fired over competing approaches to banning cheaters. So far at least, Marathon‘s free weekend appears to be off to a decent start.
Update 2/26/2026 4:02 p.m. ET: The weird bug appears to have been patched out. Arc Raiders love is officially welcome on Tau Ceti again.
— Marathon Development Team (@MarathonDevTeam) February 26, 2026