After many ups and downs, how will they land?
Popular developer Bungie, known for massive titles like Halo and Destiny, is slated to release a new tactical extraction shooter this coming March 5th, 2026, titled Marathon. It’s no secret that Bungie has had quite the following through their years of game development. The last Halo installment they created, Reach in 2010, saw a peak of over 1.2 million daily players, and the release of Destiny and its sequel only surpassed that. I regrettably wasn’t ever much of a Halo player, but Destiny was the first MMO that got its teeth into me. With a collective almost 3,000 hours sunk into both titles (rookie numbers for the average Destiny player), I’d consider myself a fan of their work.
Marathon was officially announced by Bungie at a PlayStation showcase in May of 2023, with a trailer that got generally good reception. Comments like “The Bungie art team never ceases to amaze me” were a shared sentiment among a substantial portion of fans, while others had their reservations. Like most game developers, Bungie has made some poor money moves, and that same year, they laid off around 100 employees. This decrease in workforce left a poor taste and made skepticism well-founded.
The Beginning of the Fall
From there, Bungie continued to talk about the game, sharing plenty of graphics, but still showing no gameplay. Cracks began to form, and the doubt about Marathon was building. In the background, they were continuing to nose-dive their company, firing another 220 employees in July 2024 to cut costs, saying that they were over-expanding to too many projects.
After a few months of silence, instead of cutting their new game, they doubled down and gave fans some big reveals. In April of 2025, they released an incredible cinematic as well as a gameplay trailer. The cinematic trailer was received with very high praise. From animator and creator Alberto Mielgo, who gained widespread recognition from his work on the Netflix show Love Death + Robots, the almost 9-minute short is visually stunning, unique, and gave a new breath of hope to those watching out for this game (I highly recommend you watch it.)
False Hope
On the other hand, the gameplay trailer fell flat where it stood. Comments like “Remember when this company used to set trends, and not just follow them?” and “It’s a shame this game peaked in the cinematic trailer” were the widespread sentiment. Weeks later, the first closed beta was released, and nothing changed. People thought that the gameplay felt uninspired and uninteresting.
The downhill spiral only continued to hasten. Just a month later, Bungie got into legal disputes with Matthew Kelsey Martineau, a writer who claimed that they had stolen a good chunk of content from a book he wrote when developing the groundwork of Destiny 2. Settling for an undisclosed but presumably fat sum of money in their copyright infringement lawsuit was only the beginning of that chapter in this saga.
Just weeks later, an artist known as @4nt1r34l (Antireal) brought forward quite a bit of evidence showing how Bungie had used a lot of her artwork without any permission. While no legal action was taken, all semblance of respect they may have had slipped away from Bungie.
Not Looking Good
Trying to look past it, they continued to run betas and post gameplay, making desperate changes in an attempt to prevent the game from flopping. A month later, in June 2025, they announced that they would be pushing the release of Marathon back from its slated release in September of that same year.
Currently, March 5th, 2026, is when the general public is getting their hands on Marathon. It’s plain to see that no matter what state the game is in or what the reception by the gaming community might be on release, Bungie has dug itself a hole far deeper than this newest title could ever pull it out of. Lots of people have argued that live-service games are simply a waste of time and resources in the current state of the game industry. So while it may have been doomed at conception, they certainly haven’t been doing themselves any favors.
In all honesty, I was initially so floored by the visuals of the game that I was completely sure that Bungie had done it again. What’s another 3,000 hours? But between the ethical issues and the copious “mehs” from people who have played early access, I think I won’t be alone in passing on Marathon unless some real change is proven.
Can’t wait for this one! Halo was awesome.