Bungie’s extractor shooter Marathon was released a little over a month ago on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (via Steam). And the latest data from Paul Tassi of Forbes paints a bleak picture. The development budget is at least $200 million (approximately 16 billion rubles). Digging deeper, we’re talking about $250 million—and that’s not including post-release support and future updates.
These are serious numbers. For comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 was estimated to cost around $174 million at launch. So, Marathon is already in the league of ultra-expensive projects.
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70% of players are on Steam, and they stick around for a long time
The main audience preferred Valve—around 70% of all users are there. And the retention statistics look pretty good: the average time spent playing is 28 hours. 22% of gamers clocked in over 50 hours. And 7% have surpassed 100 hours. This is a level of loyalty that many live services can only envy.
Online usage has dropped—but not catastrophically
Right now, Marathon has around 20,306 concurrent players. The peak on Steam is 88,337. But here’s the interesting thing: during the “Server Slam” (a free test event), the number reached 143,621. Was a drop expected after release? Yes. But 77th place in the Steam rankings for daily activity and 106th on Xbox aren’t the kind of positions you’d dream of with a budget of a quarter of a billion.
Bungie isn’t giving up—and it’s not shutting down the project
Yes, everyone remembers Highguard and Concord. But the studio that made Destiny is saying loud and clear: “We’re in Marathon for the long haul. Thank you for joining us on this journey.” Years of improvements lie ahead. Let’s see if the players have enough patience.
