Marathon is about to wrap up its first season. It’s a brilliant game with a dwindling player base. But Bungie has some ambitious ideas for turning that around. Game director Joe Ziegler outlined what the team has learned from the past two months and how that is informing where Marathon is headed in the future. The plan includes experiments with PVE-only modes as well as more casual PVP-lite experiences. But these are just the tip of the iceberg.
“With the first season of Marathon we’ve created a strong core community,” Ziegler wrote in a new blog post on May 14. “We’re embarking on a multi-season journey built around growing from the seed of this strong community.” He said the team is looking to solve various pain points like making the extraction shooter more rewarding and less grindy, improving new player onboarding, and deepening the endgame meta.
Bungie admitted that Marathon can be “overwhelming to learn” and that its too easy for people who play alone or aren’t super skilled to hit a wall early on in their progression. The late season endgame has also been pretty stale, grenades and snipers being used to spawn rush and lobby clear in a way that saps encounters of tactical or strategic complexity. Mostly, Bungie seems to think Marathon just needs more chill.
But the development team is also planning entirely new experiences for Marathon. Ziegler hinted at “fun and mind-bending content” that includes updated maps, new runner classes, and different gear, but also “more survival experiences for different moods. This means “exploring more pure PVP, PVE, and PVP-lite experiences.” This is the first time Bungie has come out and said that Marathon might eventually expand beyond its excellent but very punishing high-stakes PVP core with more casual modes that non-PVP players can still enjoy.
PVE-only action is coming to Tau Ceti IV
Ziegler went into more detail later in the post:
In Season 2, we will be experimenting with two modes, one at the beginning of the season and one towards the middle/latter half of the season. The experimental mode at the beginning of the season will focus more on PVE, but with a light touch of PVP. The second experimental mode will be a PVE-only mode that’s focused on crews being tasked with completing objectives together and making some progress across matches.
In terms of what else is guaranteed for Marathon season 2, which goes live on June 2, Ziegler confirmed that a rotating Duos queue is returning, along with “testing some experiments” PVE and PVP-Lite modes. Players’ max vault size will also be expanding, which is music to my ears as someone constantly playing inventory Tetris in between matches. There’s also the previously revealed Night Marsh map, Cradle progression system, and new Sentinel character, all of which players will get more details on closer to the season 2 start date.
But Ziegler also gave a peak at what’s coming beyond season 2. While Bungie will be testing some of these new modes beginning in June, season 3 will bring a much deeper overhaul to the onboarding experience on Perimeter, alongside additional content. “Season 4 we’re focusing on building more depth into the existing extraction loop,” he wrote. “Season 5 we’re looking at bringing the whole ecosystem of (PV(P)VE) play together and evolving our weird sci-fi world in new ways.”
If Bungie can continue delivering rapid mid-season improvements that respond to player feedback on a weekly basis, that first year roadmap is looking pretty robust. Despite grim Steam charts and the constant specter of cuts following the game’s initial performance, Ziegler reiterated that the team is focused on shaping Marathon “beyond 2026 and into 2027.”
Update 5/14/26, 4:44 p.m. ET: Added more information and context from Bungie’s blog post.