by theygamesBoy has it been a really rough time for Bungie these last few days. The layoffs, the handing over of staff and projects to parent company Sony, and the question marks over Destiny 2’s future have all made for pretty miserable reading. Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, isn’t immune either, and new comments from journalist Jason Schreier suggest that it’s in a “not great” spot and that it’s situation “reminds me of Suicide Squad.”
For anyone really looking forward to Bungie’s next FPS game, that’s of course not what you want to be hearing. There were already some concerns that Marathon’s development was going through a shaky patch after it saw a big change in leadership. It was reported earlier this year that former game director Chris Barrett had left with ex-Valorant game director Joe Ziegler now replacing him.
However, off the back of Schreier’s recent reporting on the Bungie layoffs, he says that his sources are feeling “pessimistic” about the game and he wouldn’t be surprised to see the game miss the current Marathon release date window of 2025.
“[It’s] not great from what I’ve heard,” he says on a new episode of the Friends Per Second podcast when asked for a temperature check on Marathon. “There’s a reason that it was planned for this year and slipped a whole year, and people that I’ve talked to are a little pessimistic about it even hitting its current planned deadline.”
The bad news keeps coming, sadly. Later on in his discussions around Marathon, Schreier likens its journey to that of Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League, one of the most notorious flops of the last 12 months. The comparison is not necessarily to do with the quality of the product, but in the similarities of when the two games were conceived, the trends they are chasing, and the resources that have gone into them.
“[Suicide Squad] came out and just totally flopped and I’m worried about Marathon being in a similar situation where it’s been in development for a while. It entered development when extraction shooters were super hot, I don’t know if that’s the case anymore, and now because they’ve committed so much money and because it was the project that was furthest along as opposed to all their other incubation bets, they are really putting a lot into it and I’m just not sure there’s much of a chance that it will be successful. But then again you never know you never know.”
As a big Destiny and Halo fan, I’m beyond confident that, from a gameplay perspective, Marathon is going to be excellent. However, for a long while I’ve held the same kind of concerns that Schreier and his Bungie sources are now talking about. Couple that with the fact that there are several other extraction shooters in development right now – ARC Raiders, Arena Breakout Infinite, and Exoborne are just a few that spring to mind – and I feel like I’m right to be a bit worried.
While 2025 did also previously seem like an achievable launch window, the Bungie layoffs and reshuffles will more than likely impact Marathon’s schedule. Of course, right now this is speculation on my end and even Schreier couldn’t confidently say a further delay will happen, but slippage into 2026 feels like a real possibility.
I’m really hoping – both as an FPS fan, and for Bungie’s sake – that Marathon is a hit. But while we wait for it to arrive, check out some of the other upcoming PC games that are on the way, or take a look at the best multiplayer games you can play right now.
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