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Marathon approaching 15k CCU low (sponsored by coachmcguirk91 - still having a blast)

Hard to say but I think the slow agonizing death spiral of Marathon has been some of the best entertainment in life, I'm 47 and this thread makes me feel 27 again giving me a zest for life daily!
I am personally having a Blast with this thread. But on a scale of Blasting 1-10, Marathon is about 7.

Concord though …

Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg
 
I am personally having a Blast with this thread. But on a scale of Blasting 1-10, Marathon is about 7.

Concord though …

Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg
Nothing can match the thrill of Concord.

The hilariously awful DEI character designs, "The Professor", all the talk about it being Herman Hulst's baby with "Star Wars-like potential", the wannabe Guardians of the Galaxy tone that felt 10 years out of date, the shocking $250 million budget, devs lashing out on Twitter…

It was truly a spectacle to behold. I don't know if any future flop can ever approach the majesty of Concord.
 
So what kind of flop do you guys prefer?

Do you like a Concord style flop, where it just crashes and burns spectacularly right out of the gate?

Or do you prefer a Marathon style flop where it suffers a slow agonizing decline into oblivion?
Concordian. It sends a clearer firmer message. Instant death, complete loss of half a billion dollars, humiliation and studio closure. Repeat the pattern enough and even Sony will start to get the message.
 
Nothing can match the thrill of Concord.

The hilariously awful DEI character designs, "The Professor", all the talk about it being Herman Hulst's baby with "Star Wars-like potential", the wannabe Guardians of the Galaxy tone that felt 10 years out of date, the shocking $250 million budget, devs lashing out on Twitter…

It was truly a spectacle to behold. I don't know if any future flop can ever approach the majesty of Concord.
I agree, while Marathon is an equivalent of a nice series on say Starz or Netflix, Concord was in a league of its own!

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Concordian. It sends a clearer firmer message. Instant death, complete loss of half a billion dollars, humiliation and studio closure. Repeat the pattern enough and even Sony will start to get the message.
Concord, Highguard, Marathon (can just put all of Bungie in here), upcoming Fairgame$ and that Hunter Gathering crap.

Sony is burning through $$$ on GaaS like a Wall Street trader on his coke habit!
 
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Concord, Highguard, Marathon (can just put all of Bungie in here), upcoming Fairgame$ and that Hunter Gathering crap.

Sony is burning through $$$ on GaaS like a Wall Street trader on his coke habit!
There's at least half a dozen cancelled but unreleased GaaS games to add to that list, and almost as many studio purchases where they were bought for GaaS or repurposed into GaaS studios after acquisition.

Insomniac spent ages making a spiderman multi player that was cancelled

Last of us online

Bend were making gaas

Bluepoint we're making gaas

A whole bunch of others I can't recall from the top of my head.

It's why we've had almost zero decent games from Sony in years. They redirect practically every studio into GaaS, most were shit canned after years of work, so they have nothing to show (if they survived at all, ie bluepoint)
 
Nothing can match the thrill of Concord.

The hilariously awful DEI character designs, "The Professor", all the talk about it being Herman Hulst's baby with "Star Wars-like potential", the wannabe Guardians of the Galaxy tone that felt 10 years out of date, the shocking $250 million budget, devs lashing out on Twitter…

It was truly a spectacle to behold. I don't know if any future flop can ever approach the majesty of Concord.

Donkey, I remember all of us on GAF when Concord hit and then died in a glorious bonfire.

Now that was a fucking blast.....

I hope Horizon Hunters Gathering comes even remotely close to that.


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Donkey, I remember all of us on GAF when Concord hit and then died in a glorious bonfire.

Now that was a fucking blast.....

I hope Horizon Hunters Gathering comes even remotely close to that.


HWMp5cAsL8jzhyFt.jpeg
Fingers crossed. This might be the closest we ever get to a true Concord successor. It's honestly a miracle that it hasn't been canceled yet. I think the gaming gods are watching out for us.
 

I mean this is the best part. Some devs or creative leads think they are sticking it to us consumers or changing cultural opinions or at the very least, making us upset.

None of this is true!

This brings me legitimate joy!

A. It is hilarious! You can't write intentional comedy this good.
B. I get to schendenfraunden -rubberneck the bomb, and get to socialize with you guys, clowning on this shit.
C. Then, I get the post mortem and people wondering how did it fail, why people are losing their jobs, like dumbfounded clueless dipshits
D. Then, I get the memes for years to come.


If the devs refuse to make good games, please keep on making this dogshit! Waste more money!
 
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There's over 400 Bungie employees making Marathon now, up from 300 before launch.

This thread is not a great place to get an accurate understanding on anything GAAS related. Marathon isn't going anywhere.

According to google the median game dev salary in Washington is around $115K.
So they are burning almost $4 million a month on salaries alone.

On a game that on its strongest platform is already outside of the 200 top selling and 100 most played games.


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It's hard trying to figure out what's happening with this game. On one hand I see this thread constantly saying it's dead, but I log in and find games quickly. Biggie hasn't pulled the plug yet, if ever. So not sure how much time to invest more into it. Especially when there is 0 road map. This game is so weird.
same.
 
According to google the median game dev salary in Washington is around $115K.
So they are burning almost $4 million a month on salaries alone.

On a game that on its strongest platform is already outside of the 200 top selling and 100 most played games.
If only PlayStation and Bungie understood game development on such a sophisticated level. You are their missing piece. Forward this post to Hiroki Tatoki immediately!
 
If only PlayStation and Bungie understood game development on such a sophisticated level. You are their missing piece. Forward this post to Hiroki Tatoki immediately!
Perhaps a Snake Oil Salesman sold them on the risk was worth the reward and that it was just a tiny step away from being an OmegaGenre and generating billions of dollars with little to no effort once it got a CCU over a 100k......oops!!!
 
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| Date UTC | Coverage h | Avg CCU | Peak CCU | Player-hours | DAU range | DAU midpoint |
| Fri 2026-04-24 | 24.0 | 13,035 | 20,171 | 312,828 | 104,276-250,262 | 156,414 |
| Sat 2026-04-25 | 24.0 | 15,003 | 20,964 | 360,076 | 120,025-288,061 | 180,038 |
| Sun 2026-04-26 | 24.0 | 14,887 | 20,618 | 357,283 | 119,094-285,826 | 178,642 |
| Mon 2026-04-27 | 24.0 | 10,708 | 17,289 | 256,998 |  85,666-205,598 | 128,499 |
| Tue 2026-04-28 | 24.0 |  9,157 | 16,459 | 219,774 |  73,258-175,819 | 109,887 |
| Wed 2026-04-29 | 24.0 |  9,572 | 15,616 | 229,731 |  76,577-183,785 | 114,866 |
| Thu 2026-04-30 | 24.0 |  9,259 | 15,096 | 222,227 |  74,076-177,782 | 111,114 |
| Fri 2026-05-01 | 24.0 | 10,852 | 16,820 | 260,442 |  86,814-208,354 | 130,221 |

Checking the Player Hours from yesterday to the previous Friday and though there was an increase compared to the week day, it was far from the Friday before.
Be interesting to see how this weekend compares. There's clearly a resistance with the game finding a core set of blast havers, but the dam is sill leaking without much in the way of a turn around signal from the upcoming Season 2.
 
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If only PlayStation and Bungie understood game development on such a sophisticated level. You are their missing piece. Forward this post to Hiroki Tatoki immediately!

I mean, at this point they've failed so many times with their live service attempts that it's statistically more likely to succeed by literally just betting on live service projects at random instead of leaving the decision to Hermen Hulst and current Sony leadership. Random is literally better than consistently making bad decisions.

So as much as I'd like the job I'll have to decline and introduce the new leader of the Playstation live service initiative:
 
I mean, at this point they've failed so many times with their live service attempts that it's statistically more likely to succeed by literally just betting on live service projects at random instead of leaving the decision to Hermen Hulst and current Sony leadership. Random is literally better than consistently making bad decisions.

Illogical.

How many "failures" did NASA experience before Apollo 11?

Small minds view failure as evidence to revert back to the before times. Successful minds view failure as necessary to build knowledge base.

The market is what it is. There's no going back to 2013. PlayStation rightly knows that it has to succeed here and it's building its expertise do so.

Oh and about Marathon...

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NASA's funding was guaranteed indefinitely by the state's monopoly on violence. Sony is a company which exists to make a profit; its willingness to keep throwing good money after bad to try and save face re the Bungie acquisition is not going to be unlimited.

They will undoubtedly learn lessons here, such as don't spend $4bn acquiring a studio and having them make a game which appeals to hardly anyone, and don't steal choose an art style which makes selling cosmetic mtx very difficult if you are relying on mtx to fund on-going development. These are very expensive lessons which could and should have been understood at no cost using only common sense.
 
Illogical.

How many "failures" did NASA experience before Apollo 11?

Small minds view failure as evidence to revert back to the before times. Successful minds view failure as necessary to build knowledge base.

The market is what it is. There's no going back to 2013. PlayStation rightly knows that it has to succeed here and it's building its expertise do so.

Oh and about Marathon...

attitude-confident.gif

You just highlighted a problem with AAA. It spends too much money to make mistakes.

It builds projects on near blind hope where proofs are found too late to change course. It's inherit to how projects are planned out. They use terminology that sounds right "pre-production", "vertical slice", "first playable" "alpha" etc... They signal intent to learn, but really there's no real course correction path, it's not built in. one milestone will move onto the next regardless of results, at best it'll get an extension, but typically will be tasked with fixing prior issues as well as pushing forward with scheduled tasks.

One of the results of this is it creates teams that don't operate on confidence. They haven't tasted the proof of good, they're conditions to believe that the fun will come later, just keep pushing forward with those tasks.

When you strip a game like Marathon down and remove all the wild expense you can see a game that could be built out and fully tested at a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the team size. Flaws could be found and fixed, fun could be had, better understanding of focus found. Then incrementally build on that the expense, build with confidence, discovery exactly what doesn't work when/if the game dips during testing and eradicate.

Man, I held Bungie up in such high regard back when they talked about the 30 seconds of fun mantra that built Halo, highlighting the important aspect of the thing the player does in that short window of time and not viewing it from the expensive high level of a 400 person team blowing masses of cash on stuff. They've clearly got that talent still who can perform well building that moment-to-moment experience, but the surrounding parts are much weaker. UI, Art direction, content, have all contributed negatively and harmed what is clearly a solid foundation of gunplay and movement.

You call this an Early Access game, and it's not without merit. This is clearly not a game building off a successful launch towards an expanded second season. It's a game still finding out what its launch should look like, but its now got the burden of trying to maintain a player base whilst doing so. The fact that it's failed to launch to the requirements of its cost means it's on the back foot. It can't launch again cause it's already out, so it somehow has to relaunch itself and try to get people to unlearn their beliefs all whilst burning mountains of cash week by week.

So all those Marathon versions of Apollo 1 - 10 should have built them with the confidence to get to the moon with Apollo 11. If they truly felt like they had it, well there's some humble pie to eat and reflection to observe because it didn't. They now don't even know if there's a wizard on that moon.
 
Imagine being Bungo and having 2 games that cant even pull what was seen as bad numbers for Destiny 2 ALONE, before being put on maintenance mode.
 
When you strip a game like Marathon down and remove all the wild expense you can see a game that could be built out and fully tested at a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the team size. Flaws could be found and fixed, fun could be had, better understanding of focus found. Then incrementally build on that the expense, build with confidence, discovery exactly what doesn't work when/if the game dips during testing and eradicate.
I've been saying this for a while... just look at what Marathon shipped with, it took them like six years to make a shooter with four maps and seven character classes. And they are a company that has been making exclusively shooters for almost 30 years.

Mass Effect 3 launched with a fully fledged multiplayer mode that, well, let's be honest, has more content than this. And a full single player RPG. And it came out like 2 years after the prior one. Something has gone seriously wrong with AAA game development. I am not sure it can be fixed but people act like this is just how it is now and it doesn't have to be.
 
I think the good thing about Concord that I am not sure we will get from the slow death of Marathon, is that Sony couldn't spin Concord failure and had to refund and apologize in corporate, but Marathon will probably not even get a PS Blog post, they will silently stop supporting it so there won't be a big payoff, if anything there might be a delayed payoff
 
I've been saying this for a while... just look at what Marathon shipped with, it took them like six years to make a shooter with four maps and seven character classes. And they are a company that has been making exclusively shooters for almost 30 years.

Mass Effect 3 launched with a fully fledged multiplayer mode that, well, let's be honest, has more content than this. And a full single player RPG. And it came out like 2 years after the prior one. Something has gone seriously wrong with AAA game development. I am not sure it can be fixed but people act like this is just how it is now and it doesn't have to be.

ME3 was built by a confident team. The project in general was well planned out, known to be a trilogy from the get go, so the team knew what they were working towards. With that confidence it allowed them to push in the right places (We can forget the ending part, clearly mistakes can happen), including adding a multiplayer mode.

The biggest ding I'd give that team was giving up on ME3 multiplayer too soon. It was still a super strong product when they ended working on it in order to put focus on Anthem. I think they left a stronger product to die there when they could have continued with ME3 multiplayer and built on a solid foundation. The success was a surprise though so plans weren't in place to do anything with it and bigger commitments like Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda had already been made.

Whilst I personally prefer ME1 as jank as that is in many parts, I can respect the trilogy overall and the strides it made with each game to push with higher ambition.
 
So a good ballpark estimate tonight should be around 17k (+/- a couple hundred CCU). Might not do a late night final recap. Heading out tonight to watch..... lacrosse playoffs between Rock and Seals!
Update from last night as I didnt get around to it. Spot on! Came in at 17,050. Was literally off by -50 people (or -0.3%). A Friday couldnt beat cryo Thursday. Now rated over 6,000th place in reviews.

And ya, Rock won! Awesome close game! The last few minutes were crazy with San Diego trying to tie it with diving goals. One counted, one was called off for crease violation!


All time peak was launch day 88.3k. Peak was 17.1k is -71.2k or -81%

Peak vs yesterday: 17.1k vs 17.1k (flat)

Yesterday's low 5.9k. If the rate holds, low tonight will be 5.9k

Fri vs Fri: 17.1k vs 21k (-3.9k or -19%)

Alternate method to estimate peaks and valleys (ballpark ratios)
On normal weekdays, 3.3:1. For example, a peak 20k will have a low of 6k. For Fri/Sat, gamers stay up playing so the ratio is 2.5:1

Steam Rankings
Daily Active Users 128
Global Top Sellers 265
Weekly Top Sellers 74 ending Apr 28 (was 81 last week)
Top Rated Games 6,006 (83.91%)

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1 pm completed hour.

Today 12.7k
Last Saturday 15.6k, peak was 20.7k

Tracking at -2.9k or -18.5% to last week. Estimated peak tonight is 20.7k less 18.5% = 16.9k
 

Bungie doesn't see Marathon going anywhere: "We know where we want to take the story over the next few years"


Speaking to GamesRadar+ about how extraction shooters are bucking multiplayer trends, Marathon creative director Julia Nardin says, "We know where we want to take the story over the next few years, but I don't want to say it's completely 'locked in' because it's important to us that our players be able to help shape it." For the studio, player input into the narrative is "part of the magic of playing a live service game."

Will Ferrell Lol GIF
 


This video argues that the upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is in a state of "collapse" due to concerning trends in its player engagement and development. Below is a summary of the key points discussed:

Declining Player Base: The speaker points out that for the first time in the game's history, the peak player count on Friday was lower than on Thursday, which he views as a massive indicator of failure (1:05 - 3:05).

Projected Player Loss: Regarding future performance, the speaker warns that players are leaving in "slabs" rather than small percentages. He projects that the game could see a significant 30% drop in its player base by Monday, though he acknowledges this is a prediction in a "wild west" scenario and the actual decline could range anywhere between 20% and 40% (4:05 - 6:07).
Systemic Gameplay Issues: The video highlights that matchmaking is deteriorating, forcing casual players (PVMers) to be consistently "farmed" by highly skilled PvP players, which is driving the former away from the game (6:09 - 6:30).

Art Style and Concept Criticism: The creator harshly criticizes the game's core concept and its art style, describing the latter as "pathetic" and visually unappealing (7:05 - 8:17).
Skepticism of Bungie: The speaker claims that official data regarding the game's success—such as launch month player counts—is heavily inflated or fabricated, specifically arguing that the console player base is likely below 30% (8:49 - 10:24).
 
Code:
| Date UTC | Coverage h | Avg CCU | Peak CCU | Player-hours | DAU range | DAU midpoint |
| Fri 2026-04-24 | 24.0 | 13,035 | 20,171 | 312,828 | 104,276-250,262 | 156,414 |
| Sat 2026-04-25 | 24.0 | 15,003 | 20,964 | 360,076 | 120,025-288,061 | 180,038 |
| Sun 2026-04-26 | 24.0 | 14,887 | 20,618 | 357,283 | 119,094-285,826 | 178,642 |
| Mon 2026-04-27 | 24.0 | 10,708 | 17,289 | 256,998 |  85,666-205,598 | 128,499 |
| Tue 2026-04-28 | 24.0 |  9,157 | 16,459 | 219,774 |  73,258-175,819 | 109,887 |
| Wed 2026-04-29 | 24.0 |  9,572 | 15,616 | 229,731 |  76,577-183,785 | 114,866 |
| Thu 2026-04-30 | 24.0 |  9,259 | 15,096 | 222,227 |  74,076-177,782 | 111,114 |
| Fri 2026-05-01 | 24.0 | 10,852 | 16,820 | 260,442 |  86,814-208,354 | 130,221 |

Checking the Player Hours from yesterday to the previous Friday and though there was an increase compared to the week day, it was far from the Friday before.
Be interesting to see how this weekend compares. There's clearly a resistance with the game finding a core set of blast havers, but the dam is sill leaking without much in the way of a turn around signal from the upcoming Season 2.
Timberrrrr! Some nice data tracking falcon.

Hilarious to see the thread title change.

As an early fun estimate, if today ends at about 17k as projected above, the ballpark historic day over day losses are -10% Sun vs Sat, and then compounded another -10% Mon vs Sun.

So 17k * 90% * 90% = about 13.8k Monday peak. Round up if you want to 14k.
 
In my experience queue time has been pretty bad for weeks but now it is getting worse and worse. So painful waiting for a game at the moment. Still love the game.
 
Everyone is chasing the wrong GAAS ideology as show here by Bongo Cat which has held numbers for a year now! Crazy times..

MpZY3xgRTOESLZEa.png



Yes the games free, but the budget was like 3000.00 to make
 
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Is there numbers for consoles?

As I recall, destiny was more popular on consoles than pc.

Not that it matters, I'm just wondering

Another question I have is how long does the game need to run before refunds are no longer needed (from Sonys perspective)?
 
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So what kind of flop do you guys prefer?

Do you like a Concord style flop, where it just crashes and burns spectacularly right out of the gate?

Or do you prefer a Marathon style flop where it suffers a slow agonizing decline into oblivion?
Concordian for sure. Marathon's slow decline is almost as boring to watch as the game itself.
 
I mean this is the best part. Some devs or creative leads think they are sticking it to us consumers or changing cultural opinions or at the very least, making us upset.

None of this is true!

This brings me legitimate joy!

A. It is hilarious! You can't write intentional comedy this good.
B. I get to schendenfraunden -rubberneck the bomb, and get to socialize with you guys, clowning on this shit.
C. Then, I get the post mortem and people wondering how did it fail, why people are losing their jobs, like dumbfounded clueless dipshits
D. Then, I get the memes for years to come.


If the devs refuse to make good games, please keep on making this dogshit! Waste more money!
I'd rather they not make dumb decisions and make good games with good stories.

But here we are I guess🤷‍♂️
 
I see the numbers are a little higher again today so wanted to check in on the standing. Tarkov has popped back up now and Hunt is at levels Marathon might never see again.

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Only way Bungie survives this is Destiny 3 - with all the money they pumped into Marathon and how much they neglected Destiny 2, Destiny 2 is still going to end up with a higher CCU.
 
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