Destiny 2/Marathon

Bungie

As Destiny 2 fans grapple with the news that the live game, part of a series that has run for 11 years, will no longer get new updates after two weeks from now, many players are going through various stages of grief. And now, a number have hit “anger,” directed toward one game, and sometimes one community in particular, Marathon.

This escalated yesterday when Aztecross, the streamer and YouTuber who has been the biggest content creator in Destiny 2 for quite some time now, published a video expressing extreme anger about the situation, saying that he will no longer play the new Marathon season and even potentially turn down lucrative brand deals from Sony for its part in this. The refrain is simply that he doesn’t want Marathon, he wants more Destiny, and it appears like he’s going to use his platform to reinforce that point repeatedly, saying he doesn’t care if he’s going to be petty about it the rest of the year.

It is a noteworthy moment, given that Aztecross is a significant public face for the game and again, its largest creator. Naturally, this explosive video has divided fans further, with some sympathizing or encouraging his anger, as it reflects their own, while others say that this is making everything worse and comes off as sour grapes, to say the least. But it’s not just him; his views are widely held, as are the opposite. (And hello Cross if you’re reading this in a video).

I’ll break this into two parts, the facts about Marathon’s past and present regarding Destiny 2, and my own take on all this:

• Significant resources were taken from Destiny 2 in the past few years to develop Marathon. That was dozens, eventually, hundreds of employees in a studio that had already shrunk during layoffs. It also included most of the PvP team, and Destiny 2 PvP in particular very clearly suffered because of it.
• According to reporting from both Jason Schreier and me, the decision was made to forgo continuing Destiny 2 to try to make it more approachable for players, and instead to reallocate more resources to Marathon while shutting down Destiny 2.
• This occurred during a time when, even with Destiny 2’s worst numbers in the history of the game, it was still bringing in more overall players than Marathon, which is only three months old.
• Marathon will now be Bungie’s only functional game going forward. Other Destiny spinoff projects have not been greenlit. The much-hoped-for Destiny 3 is neither in production nor greenlit, and Sony reportedly has balked at the idea due to its likely cost. This is in the wake of Marathon costing at least $250 million to develop over the years.

So, with those facts, you may be able to understand the anger of the Destiny community about Marathon being “chosen” over Destiny 2 to live, or at least to be invested in, as whether or not Marathon survives past a few seasons or a year remains to be seen. But given that this has happened and the current reality, there are really two not-great options here.

• One is that Marathon fails. Again, as Bungie’s only game now with nothing else greenlit, that could lead to the slashing or shutdown or dissolution of the studio entirely. I believe that is a more likely option than what some people are hoping, that it would let Sony know they made a “mistake” and then they would pivot to making Destiny 3 after all. That would effectively be throwing many hundreds of millions more at a new Bungie project after two had closed/failed, and is exceedingly unlikely.
• The other is that Marathon, over time, becomes a hit as it expands and attracts more players. This would keep Bungie afloat as a studio, and it could lead to more investment from Sony rather than the never-ending reductions we keep seeing. And that could include more Destiny content in whatever form that may take. The counter is that Sony would be proven “right” by the Marathon pick, and they’d only invest more in Marathon. That might be true, but this seems like the least-worst option, since the other one could mean Bungie closing altogether.

Some people want that. They want Bungie to be “punished” both for how the game has been neglected in favor of Marathon since The Final Shape, especially, and for the fact that Marathon now has Sony’s favor while their favorite game is dead.

I’m not telling anyone what to feel. I too have that anger, as this is the most significant game of my entire career, my life, really, and losing it is devastating. But trying to be pragmatic, I don’t think that wishing death upon Marathon helps the situation at this point.

I do not, however, think that these players need to all go buy and play Marathon. That’s not a reasonable demand if people simply don’t like the game, and they don’t “owe” it to Bungie to do that. But I think there’s a difference between that and supporting the game in terms of at least not publicly lighting it on fire. Hoping it doesn’t fail for the above reasons doesn’t seem like a bridge too far.

Still, I get the anger. I feel it too. I just don’t want it to burn the whole forest down.

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