Bungie’s Marathon Focus
- Forbes reported on April 22 that Bungie has shifted more developers onto Marathon than Destiny 2, marking a reversal from last year as the studio prioritizes its newly launched extraction shooter. - Bungie followed with Marathon update 1.0.6.1 on April 21, tuning the WSTR shotgun after Joe Ziegler flagged balance concerns, while SteamDB showed the game’s all-time Steam peak at 88,337 players. - The shift lands as Destiny 2’s Shadow and Order update sits delayed to June 9, 2026, leaving Marathon as Bungie’s most actively iterated live release. (bungie.net)
Bungie has shifted more developers onto Marathon than Destiny 2, according to a Forbes report published April 22. (forbes.com) That report said the split has flipped from roughly 300 on Marathon and 550 on Destiny 2 a year ago to Marathon now “edging out” Destiny 2 inside Bungie. Game Rant matched that reporting on April 24 and said Bungie has about 800 developers overall. (forbes.com) (gamerant.com) The timing is concrete: Marathon launched on March 5, 2026, after Bungie had moved its release date from the earlier September 23, 2025 target. Bungie announced the March date in December and had previously pitched the game as a cross-play extraction shooter for Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. (bungie.net) (press.bungie.com) Bungie is still patching Marathon week to week. In update 1.0.6 on April 14, the studio added the CyberAcme Runner Reinforcement Initiative and new commendations, and in update 1.0.6.1 on April 21 it adjusted overflow items and tuned the WSTR Combat Shotgun’s long-range slug performance. (bungie.net 1) (bungie.net 2) Joe Ziegler also pushed an experimental Dire Marsh Sponsored queue on April 15 that forced players into free white-tier kits. IGN reported Bungie framed the mode as a way to test a less punishing “zero to hero” loop for newer players. (ign.com) (gfinityesports.com) The player backdrop is mixed. SteamDB lists Marathon’s all-time Steam concurrency peak at 88,337 on March 6, 2026, and about 8,101 players live when the page was crawled on April 25. (steamdb.info) SteamDB also showed 84.23% positive reviews from roughly 46,000 reviews, which suggests Bungie is balancing healthy review sentiment against a much smaller concurrent audience than launch week. (steamdb.info 1) (steamdb.info 2) Destiny 2, meanwhile, is in a quieter stretch. Bungie said on February 19 that its next major update, Shadow and Order, was undergoing large revisions, would be renamed, and was delayed to June 9, 2026. (bungie.net 1) (bungie.net 2) That leaves Bungie’s newest game taking the bulk of staffing and the fastest patch cadence at the same time. The studio is now spending April 2026 trying to hold Marathon’s audience while Destiny 2 waits for its next major release. (forbes.com) (bungie.net)
