Bungie’s revived franchise, Marathon, hasn’t experienced the smoothest development phase, to say the least. Following the announcement in May 2023, the game was delayed to 2025 partly because of Bungie’s layoffs.
In 2024, news spread that Game Director Christopher Barrett had been fired for misconduct and would be replaced by the former Valorant Game Director, Joe Ziegler. That’s also when insiders like Tom Henderson started relaying negative vibes about the game’s future from their sources.
Last month, Bungie suddenly announced a release date, setting Marathon to debut on September 23, 2025 while also showing off more gameplay footage. However, just last week, another scandal erupted: Bungie confirmed that the game had used assets taken without permission from artist Antireal. They admitted their fault, said the assets would be removed, and added that they would ‘make things right’ with the artist, presumably through some sort of compensation.
It is amid this uneasy climate that the rumor of a potential Marathon delay lands very loudly. In the latest episode of his Sacred Symbols + podcast (currently paywalled on Patreon), former IGN journalist Colin Moriarty claimed:
I was told by someone familiar with marketing plans in a key overseas market that there are now no plans to do paid marketing for Marathon at all. I don’t know if those plans were affected by what has recently happened or if that was always the plan or whatever, but it is considered a fairly unusual move for a game of this high profile.
Of course, readers should take this information with a big grain of salt for the time being. We’ll have to wait until we hear from Sony. One thing is for certain, though: neither Sony nor Bungie can afford another live service failure. Sony already had the fallout of Concord’s $200 million failed expenditure, not to mention the cancellation of The Last of Us Online, while Bungie suffered several rounds of layoffs and recently had former developers openly speaking out against the studio’s leadership. If the delay can help, it’s definitely the right choice.
Marathon will be launched on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X with full cross-play between all platforms. The sci-fi first-person PvP extraction shooter won’t be a full-priced title, so it should be priced around $40 or $50 at the most.
