I have spent a lot of this year arguing that the extraction genre is turning toward PvE and solo players, and that the games ignoring that are swimming against the current. Marathon is the clearest case study yet, and it is not a happy one. This is the story of a studio betting big on player versus player in a genre that increasingly wants the opposite.
A quick recap, because the road here was bumpy. Marathon is Bungie’s extraction shooter, the team behind Halo and Destiny. It had a rough closed alpha in 2025 that drew heavy criticism, made worse by a dispute over artwork that appeared to be lifted from another artist, and the original September 2025 launch got pushed back indefinitely. Bungie regrouped, came back with a clearer pitch, and launched it on the 5th of March 2026 at forty dollars on PS5, Xbox and PC. To its credit, the relaunch did bring in solo-friendly features, a solo queue and proximity chat at launch, and a solo-oriented way to drop in, loot and extract without risking your hard-earned gear. So Bungie clearly knew solo players mattered.
The launch itself was not a disaster. It peaked somewhere around eighty-eight thousand concurrent on Steam and reportedly sold over a million copies in its first few weeks. Respectable numbers for most games. The problem was what happened next. The player count fell off a cliff. By late spring it was reportedly sitting at less than fifteen percent of its launch peak, averaging somewhere around ten thousand concurrent on Steam before promotions. For a Bungie live-service game with years of planned content, that is a worrying collapse, and a lot of it comes down to the same thing. It was built around PvP in a moment when a huge slice of the audience has made clear they want PvE.
Here is the telling part, and the reason I am covering it. Bungie’s plan to turn it around leans on PvE. Season 2 is bringing more PvE-flavoured experiences, and a free Open Play Week in early June 2026 spiked the Steam numbers back toward forty thousand, though that bump looks temporary. When the studio’s recovery strategy for a struggling PvP extraction shooter is to add more PvE, you do not need me to spell out the lesson. The players voted with their time, and they voted for the loop without the constant human pressure.
So should you play it? If you genuinely enjoy competitive PvP extraction and you like Bungie’s gunfeel, there is a polished game here and it is cheaper than it was meant to be. But if you are like most of the people who watch this channel, and what you actually want is the extraction loop without getting hunted by other players, Marathon is not really for you, and its struggles are a big part of why the rest of the genre is finally building for us instead.
For the games that are getting this right, see the state of solo PvE extraction shooters in 2026, and let the extraction shooter matcher point you at one that actually fits.
MarathonBungieextraction shooterPvE
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