Bungie’s newly released extraction shooter Marathon received its first big post-launch patch earlier this week. And one tweak it made to gunshot noises seemingly changed the game overnight for many players, leading to a lot of yelling online. Now, Bungie has admitted it made a mistake and promised to partially roll back the controversial change.
On March 11, Bungie rolled out Marathon update 1.0.0.4, the first substantial patch for the online FPS since it launched on March 5 on consoles and PC. And, on paper at least, the patch notes seemed great. More ammo in free loadout kits. Better objective markers. A bug with Rook’s map was fixed. Good stuff. I called the update “basically perfect.” But once I hopped online, I sensed that a change which had seemed small in the patch notes actually seemingly upended Marathon overnight.
In the patch notes, Bungie mentioned it had “increased the range” at which players could hear gunfire and explosions. I didn’t think much of it when reading the notes, but in reality, it has turned the game into a deadly, hyper-aggressive warzone. And I’m not the only person who thinks this. PC Gamer’s Morgan Park also reported on the vibe shift. And all over the Marathon subreddit, you can find plenty of posts and comments that boil down to “What happened in the update? I’m getting attacked all the time!” or “I think the noise change is making this game a battle royale.”
The online yelling got loud enough that on Friday, Marathon audio director Chase Combs posted on Twitter: “Feedback heard, loud and clear. (Get it?)” with a gif of Holt from Brooklyn 99 exclaiming, “Fine, I was trying something, and it didn’t work!” This got people excited that the change to gunshots would be reverted. And they were half right.
🤣 Feedback heard, loud and clear. (Get it?) https://t.co/zXj4A1BMhh pic.twitter.com/2M4BEzqGsH
— Chase Combs (@sonicbarber) March 13, 2026
Later that same day, on March 13, Bungie confirmed it was partially rolling back the audio tweak. In a post from the Marathon dev’s BlueSky account, game director Joe Ziegler shared a statement about the change, why it was implemented, and what Bungie was going to do to fix the situation.
“We originally wanted to give everyone more info in the map and make it easier to make choices around audio,” said Ziegler in a text update. “Where people are, what’s happening on the map, whether to run towards or away from danger, but we’re hearing we overdid it a bit and looking to pull back the range in an upcoming patch. This change should still give some of that benefit, but at a distance that feels more comfortable and intuitive to everyone.”
A later post from the Marathon development team said that Bungie was “closely monitoring how” the louder gunshots affect runs and admitted they messed up.
“We recognize that this was an overcorrection and will pull things back in a way that maintains your ability to hear each other’s actions, but not at a distance that feels excessive,” said Bungie. “We’re still aligning on how to ensure the best player experience, and will deploy changes in an upcoming update.”
Personally, I don’t think making guns a bit louder was a bad idea, but it should have been done later on, after the studio had more data, and not so drastically. Then again, I think online games are way too quick to make changes and updates, and I miss when that wasn’t the case. Still, if games are going to update all the time, I’m fully behind Bungie making guns a bit quieter so I’m not so likely to get attacked by eight players for simply shooting a turret that is about to kill me.
