After Losing to Destiny 2, Does Marathon Still Have a Shot?

According to Tech4Gamers, Bungie and Sony’s paid extraction shooter Marathon is now trailing Destiny 2 on Steam, based on live data tied to May 17, 2026. Over the past 24 hours, Marathon reached a peak of 12560 players with 5990 currently active, while Destiny 2 posted 13146 and 6597 respectively. What stands out is not just the comparison itself, but the speed of the drop: a $40 new release is already being outperformed on Steam by a free-to-play game that has been running for more than nine years.

That is the real warning sign for any live-service game. The biggest threat is rarely first-week controversy. It is the moment the community starts going quiet. Bungie has spent years proving it knows how to keep players around through worldbuilding and combat rhythm, and Destiny 2 did not last nine years on gunfeel alone. It gave players reasons to stay in that universe. Marathon, by contrast, seems to be hitting players with pressure and friction before many of them have built any attachment to its world at all. That is a rough fit for an extraction shooter, a genre that already asks a lot from new players and tends to lose them quickly.

What makes the situation more awkward is that Bungie is not just dealing with normal genre competition. The extraction shooter audience itself is already shrinking, and industry commentary in the source notes that the genre’s core player base is heavily concentrated on Steam. That makes Steam the most direct, and most unforgiving, place for Marathon to be judged in real time. The contrast looks even worse when you remember that Destiny 2 was originally a console-exclusive title, with PC not even being its primary native battleground early on, yet it is still ahead of Bungie’s newer game on Steam.

There is at least one positive sign: Bungie is not acting like it is walking away. The studio has already promised long-term support for Marathon, with continued updates and optimization, and it has confirmed that Season 2 will launch next month. That update will focus on improving the new-player experience, lowering the barrier to entry, and adding PvE content alongside a lighter PvP mode. The logic is easy to understand. Not every player wants to be thrown straight into high-pressure competition; many just want room to find their footing before deciding whether to commit.

If you are still on the fence, the buying advice here is simple: do not rush to spend $40 yet. It makes more sense to wait for Season 2 to go live, then see whether Steam concurrency and community sentiment actually stop sliding. In live-service games, promises matter, but retention depends much more on the moment-to-moment experience, the sense of progression, and whether players can find a reason to keep investing in the world. If Season 2 only patches over obvious problems, it may merely stop the bleeding. If it can bring in new players smoothly and help returning players regain confidence, then Marathon might still have a real long-term future.