Marathon Server Slam Shows Promise for Bungie's Extraction Shooter

Following the tremendous success of Embark Studios' Arc Raiders, attention has shifted to Bungie's Marathon. This new game is also an extraction shooter similar to Arc Raiders and Escape from Tarkov, except with the sci-fi flair you'd expect from the studio that created Halo and Destiny.

The free server slam weekend is running until March 2 at 10 AM PT, which gives everyone on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S a few days to really dig in and try it out. And if early numbers are any indication, that's exactly what a lot of gamers are doing already.

As of the time of this writing, the Marathon Server Slam peaked at over 143k concurrent players on release night, and more than half that number are playing on a Friday afternoon. This weekend should be a good barometer for the game's interest to see if it can eclipse that number.

Notably, the previously released (and then unreleased) Concord never even surpassed 1,000 concurrent players on Steam, and this server slam weekend for Marathon has already surpassed the all-time concurrent peak for Highguard.

It's worth noting that none of these numbers for any of these games are indicative of PlayStation or Xbox players, but in the case of Marathon, I'd wager that after release, it will have its biggest audience on PlayStation since that's Bungie's current parent company.

Currently, Marathon is the 5th best-selling game on Steam in terms of revenue, and it's still a few weeks away from launch. It's the only prepurchase game on the list in the top 20 other than Crimson Desert.

Like other extraction shooters, Marathon pits players against one another on raids to secure resources, defeat NPC enemies, and loot high-value locations. The goal is to drop into a game, complete your missions, and then get out alive with your gear. If you die in a round, all of your gear is left on your body, and anyone can loot it. Hence the thrilling sense of risk and reward.

There are lots of major differences, though. For starters, in Marathon, players select "shells" that define their class. Certain shells may excel at healing and damage mitigation, while other shells may boost your speed or offensive capabilities. The game is primarily structured around teamwork and choosing shells that complement one another well.

I spent three hours with the server slam last night on PS5 Pro and had a good time. Gameplay feels tight and fast-paced, and the variety of character shells is really refreshing. My biggest issue is the visual noise in the menus, and how you navigate them between rounds is very overwhelming. It's got a very sleek and cool aesthetic, but it's not very readable. Game balance could use some work as well, since time-to-kill seems way too fast at the moment, especially against other players.

It's worth noting also that Marathon (2026) is sort of a reboot as well. Bungie previously developed the Marathon trilogy of first-person shooters for Apple computers in the pre-Halo days, set within this same universe. The first game was also called Marathon, but it was released in 1994.

Extraction shooters are absolutely one of the hot current trends in the industry.

For indie studios, there is certainly a gap in the market because most games in this genre have AAA funding or are comparably massive AA productions. It seems like there is an opportunity for some different takes on the mechanics and premise of an extraction shooter that side steps the current popular aesthetic of modern military and post-apocalypse settings.

Also, join the official Discord server to stay up to date. Subscribe to our Newsletter and join our 80 Level Talent platform, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Instagram, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.