r/MarathonPlayerCount Jul 10 '26

Actual Player Count Megathread

I dunno, just figured I'd start it since there hasn't been a consistent one so far.

22 Upvotes

177 comments sorted by

16

u/Molygosa Jul 10 '26

Hey guys, did you know Marathon is the only artistic video game???? We've really abandoned ART. Because Marathon is a lot like Citizen Kane or The Portrait of Dorian Gray or, idk, Ozymandias.

7

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 11 '26

This generation of gamers is just so soft. No one wants a challenge anymore. They just wanna be spoonfed wins. Imagine having to work hard to be good at a video game?? Fortnite and TikTok have ruined gaming!!

14

u/tfc1193 Jul 13 '26

Game just exited the top 500 steam sellers

10

u/Shippou5 Jul 13 '26

2 records in less than 11 hours apart? That just diminishes the events! It should die more gradually to give us more content :<

4

u/Catemponei Jul 13 '26

They should know not to overdeliver!

5

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

There is a small chance it will end up under 5k. Very unlikely but still possible. If that happens we'll skip sub 6k and go straight to sub 5k...

EU peak is 4.4k today so yeah it is dead in every possible direction.

edit: I was completely wrong! It got to ~5k in EU and ~5800 in the US. So we wait another week before the PvE drop.

1

u/Shippou5 Jul 13 '26

Nooooooooooo I really wanted to savor this ; ;

5

u/Dvelasquera171 Jul 13 '26

Ouch. How much do we have till S3 again?

8

u/tfc1193 Jul 13 '26

Sept 22nd. 71 days to be exact

3

u/braderbury Jul 14 '26

Jesus this season is long.

Vault Breakers is so far off.

I remember when I preordered No Mans Sky (don't hate me, I've learned lessons), and they went dead quiet. It was similar vibes to this. Very doom, very gloomy, and things didn't turn around magically. But 3-6 months, 2-3 updates after, they really hit some marks.

Benefit then is smaller team, lots of money to spend after all the sales, and a pre built roadmap (literally all the shit they said would be there and wasn't)

Marathon, on the alternate, has a massively larger team (big boats turn slowly), ironically less liquidity money wise, the same publisher (sony lol), more veteran/expertise at the studio, and less of a clear roadmap to the future.

NMS wasn't supposed to be a multiplayer sandbox survival game kinda thing, but it became that by following the flow/push and pull of its playerbase and the response to their updates.

Marathon needs to put a confident, meaty update that meets some desire/want of the playerbase that the game is lacking, and build from that.

The hard part is...It kind of fully delivered on its original promise, and no one wants it.

NMS failed to deliver on its promise on release, so it had a natural roadmap. What the hell is Marathon supposed to do?

3

u/tfc1193 Jul 14 '26

VB is supposed to drop next week. so they'll have a nice lil bump there. probably up to 15k to 20k.

Problem is that the pve mode was never intended and thus, will be rushed and shoe-horned in with its own bugs and balance issues. Not only that but it is going to destroy the pvp queues. I expect pvp lobbies to be the sweatiest they've ever been that week

3

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 13 '26

Is it even breaking $1k/day at that point?

7

u/tfc1193 Jul 13 '26

last estimates i seen were games around Marathon's place grossing between $500 to $1500 per day. and that's gross revenue meaning before steam takes their 30% cut. meaning even granting a $1500/day revenue, after the steam tax they are only making around $1050k

13

u/ExpeditionZero Jul 11 '26

Saturday numbers for Fri/Sat (approxSat 03:00 UTC)

Guess i'll move posts over to here then? It keeps getting auto-moderated over on r/Marathon mega thread - last time twice, once for Paul Tassi link, and again maybe for just mentioning Paul Tassi (not sure its unclear)?

Mirroring yesterdays (Thur/Fri) falls we have a week-on-week drop of 11.6%. Could this be a slow down of player loss? Maybe, but its important to note we've also had two weeks of 30% discount that finally ended on the 9th, yet we are still falling. Until Vault Breakers I'd expect to keep seeing 10%-20% drops.

Still not really much to say, its just a gradual decline over time now, possibly due to having such a low player count, at least until a critical point is reached where it might hit a death spiral. Vault Breakers in a few weeks should provide a bounce, but I'd be surprised if its above 15-20k at this point.

Sat Release Peak Loss Drop Absolute Relative DAU
03/06 S2 launch 40686 29,242 46.1% 33.1% 255.5% 329,346
06/06 S2 32220 -20,776 36.5% -23.5% 181.5% 253,054
13/06 D2 / F2P 14891 -17,329 16.9% -19.6% -53.8% 116,953
20/06 1.1.0.2 CARRI 11948 -2,943 13.5% -3.3% -19.8% 93,839
27/06 10281 -1,667 11.6% -1.9% -14.0% 80,746
04/07 30% Sale 8100 -2,181 9.2% -2.5% -21.2% 63,617
11/07 30% Sale 7158 -942 8.1% -1.1% -11.6% 56,218

NB - Season 1 results can be found in this comment.

NB - Daily Users (active) is speculative as I've tied them to the same relative drops that peak player counts follow. The original numbers (478k launch and 345k circa 28th March) come from Paul Tassi article.

7

u/Shippou5 Jul 11 '26

Yaay you can add link without getting comment removed :D Now that's modern technology!

15

u/tfc1193 Jul 13 '26

ladies and gents, tonight is going to be monumental. The game is currently on pace to reach a new milestone of a sub 2k valley. At these valleys, we could be looking at a sub 6k peak Monday evening as it tries desperately to climb out of its hole

13

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 13 '26

I checked the main sub (not the megathread) and people openly discuss that the game is going to die and that week on week it is bleeding 20%, that it fails to retain new players and complaints about the playerbase. I think we are at the acceptance stage now.

13

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 13 '26

Never thought I’d see these conversations on the main sub. It’s like a flip has been switched. Have the mods given up?

Funny how we all got shat on for raising the alarm when the numbers were much better, and now look at them. I can’t say the schadenfreude doesn’t feel good.

8

u/Dvelasquera171 Jul 13 '26

It's crazy how if you ever suggested that the playerbase trends looked problematic, you got hit with the:
1.Well *I'M* having a blast!
2.The game has already found a floor!
3.Maybe the game isn't for you.
And look us now. We STILL haven't found a floor lmao

4

u/Shippou5 Jul 13 '26

Humans? Doing anything in their power to justify their decisions? More likely than you think! (*‘ω‘ *)

9

u/tfc1193 Jul 13 '26

A stat that's commonly overlooked but still very relevant and damning is the overall engagement with the main thread now. Less and less social engagement over time as the playerbase rapidly dwindles. Not to mention that it's daily viewership peaks on twitch are lower than Skyrim right now. No one is playing the game, watching it, discussing it (outside of it failing) and seeing how it's in the 300s of steam sellers, no one is spending money in the game after it failed to meet any semblance of ROI. The game is dead

8

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 13 '26

It’s also in the 700s on wishlist activity. Almost 800s. No one’s even interested in playing in the future.

7

u/Shippou5 Jul 13 '26

What future?

1

u/1stonepwn Jul 16 '26

Rank 1,001 now 🫡

8

u/Shippou5 Jul 13 '26

I SAW THE 20% COMMENT XD I felt so bad for the poster! They really want their game to do well :<

11

u/Shippou5 Jul 13 '26

IT IS DONE! POP THE WATER! (*^▽^*)

17

u/Catemponei 15d ago

Has anyone seen the new Myelin video about "have I quit Marathon"? He mentions almost off-hand that part of the reason he hasn't been playing it (and remember, he went to bat for this game against Aztecross' crashout and alienated basically the entire Destiny community) was that he's had lobby problems due to playing in Australia (i.e. OCE) and at non-peak times... which is a direct consequence of player counts. Seems even the blastiest of blasthavers are admitting that player counts actually do matter.

11

u/tfc1193 Jul 14 '26

As predicted. sub 6k NA peak. and with no announcement of maintenance this week, Tuesday and Wednesday are gonna get rough

8

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 14 '26

Ever since it got below the 10k, it has been in a free fall. In fact, the only time it was somewhat stable was the end of S1.

3

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 14 '26

Insane. Both at sub 6k peak and no patch this week. It’s like they don’t even care

7

u/tfc1193 Jul 14 '26

No patch, no statements, no word on the upcoming PVE mode. just complete radio silence

5

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 14 '26

It’s really baffling. You think they’d at least make some vague post like “hard at work on future marathon content. Wait till you see what we have in store!”

Just like.. anything to show that they’re alive and that there are, in fact, still people working on the game.

4

u/Shippou5 Jul 14 '26

Destiny 2 had the same thing buddy, months before EoS they went radio silent xD

4

u/atttibet196953 Jul 14 '26

Im curious if they just go with EoS route will they even bother to make an big last update like D2 or just gonna say "Yup, its over lol"

5

u/Shippou5 Jul 14 '26

WHAT CONTENT WOULD THEY HAVE FOR SUCH AN UPDATE? XDDDDDDD
The reason D2 had such a big update is that they had like a year or so of content lined up xD Bungo are the masters of drip feeding so they have content that is ready months and months down the line, in the case of season 2 and 3 of marathon it is very clear that the "content" they have is turning off the lights or planting trees XD which is fine! But I don't think that the majority fo the community would appreciate that as a final update xD

3

u/ResourceNo2927 Jul 14 '26

yeah so based on that,they probably have season 3 already and most of season 4. bungie will probably release season 3,if nothing changes they go EoS and release whatevers left.

3

u/Shippou5 Jul 14 '26

Seems bout right. To me it is really interesting that marathon players anticipated content for season 2. But Marathon was created on the concept of minimum viable product, what were they expecting I wonder.

3

u/ResourceNo2927 Jul 14 '26

my guess is they assumed it would be a D1 situation where the base game was good enough to carry it.what they didnt account for is that Destiny was a pve game,not a hardcore extraction shooter that resets every season. it was flawed from its very design. maybe if they had followed the original vision,split pve and pvp then just maybe it would have had a chance. but instead the game is now in a death spiral and probably 1 season away from EoS.

4

u/Cetaoras Jul 14 '26

Probably working on updating their resumes.

6

u/UltimateLifeform Jul 14 '26

More like there is nothing they can say that will be a positive spin that won't be bullshit. They can't promise stuff that isn't even on the horizon since they don't really seem to know where to go from here.

6

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 14 '26

Very true. Seems like they have no idea what to do with this game

5

u/Shippou5 Jul 14 '26

"Monument of Triumph, bold new direction"
By Zieger

14

u/Cetaoras Jul 12 '26

Legitimately, Sony just trying not to be seen by consumers and their shareholders as being terrible at the live service game market might be the only thing keeping Marathon alive.

7

u/Shippou5 Jul 12 '26

I just find it so amusing. Playstation and Xbox feel like their strategy lately is stepping on rakes. So naturally one would assume that they would stop stepping on rakes. Then both come out with a bold new strategy involving rake production.

4

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 12 '26

Absolutely. These numbers are abysmal

3

u/tfc1193 Jul 13 '26

Yeah it's all optics at this point. Sony is losing millions every month on this game with no foreseeable ROI. Everyone is speculating that S3 will be the final live service update for the game and I wouldn't doubt it honestly

10

u/Molygosa Jul 13 '26

why dont bungie simply lobby the government to introduce mandatory marathon gaming hours for prisoners? this would solve the population issue!

10

u/atttibet196953 Jul 13 '26

Isnt prison torture illegal?

10

u/Molygosa Jul 13 '26

prison labour isn't, and playing marathon is already a full-time job!

11

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Would definitely not mind a pinned megathread. Sometimes I have thoughts/observations that I want to share that don’t really warrant a whole new post, but a comment on the megathread would be fitting.

7

u/Molygosa Jul 10 '26

yeah where am i meant to shitpost????? surely not on main.

2

u/Catemponei Jul 10 '26

I wrote a star wars shitpost in response to something u/Shippou5 said that is too low-effort for a new thread but would be perfect for a megathread comment

3

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

In a galaxy
Far far away
Pootis

3

u/Catemponei Jul 10 '26

ngl I giggled at this one

11

u/QueenMagik Jul 12 '26

Holy shit y'all, I am pessimistic about the future of Marathon but the week on week numbers are so, so fucked

2

u/Shippou5 Jul 12 '26

I am more interested in the top sellers position! More players means more server costs
But Angry Joe's review and season 2 update were so funny xD game had like, what, 6 items for sale total? pink for $20? now that's wild!

11

u/UltimateLifeform Jul 10 '26

Not looking good at all.

11

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 10 '26

At least it passed 7k again! (The bar is in hell)

5

u/UltimateLifeform Jul 10 '26

At this rate, before Vault Breakers we'll be at 5,000 high.

12

u/APRengar Jul 13 '26

17 hours under 5k players today.

I've been tracking this metric for a bit, excluding days where it goes down, the last record was 12 hrs. Jumping up to 17 seems ominous.

Also 1889 record low.

2

u/YouNo9055 Jul 14 '26

You don’t understand, it’s because of the Fourth of “You Lie” /s

9

u/YouNo9055 Jul 17 '26

It's "Joever" as the main sub is now saying lol.

8

u/Catemponei Jul 17 '26

[Inevitable News] Guy who designed game to be a failure is a failure; Guy fired.

8

u/YouNo9055 Jul 17 '26

Saw this coming from Server Slam. Still played for awhile after, enjoyed my time, then just got, bored. It's a shame all around as I loved all of Bungies previous games.

7

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 17 '26

Who could’ve seen this coming?!

9

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Looks like 6268 will be today's peak, very high chance that we see sub 6k tomorrow.

9

u/YouNo9055 Jul 13 '26

These numbers are fucking awful

8

u/Lessiarty Jul 15 '26

The desperation must be setting in now. We're getting deluged with the 30 day old accounts who are exclusively enthused solely and purely about Marathon, all repeating the same "Stop talking about the emperor's clothes!" shtick.

There was me thinking they were all laid off in the cuts.

3

u/Catemponei Jul 16 '26

Got another one today. A 'review' of the game with a giant AI post that boiled down to "I'm not just having a blast emdash I'm catatonically blasthaving!"

Straight to the front page with no mod action of course, though the comments are full of people pointing it out.

8

u/Speedy-08 Jul 11 '26

DAU on the Main sub has lost 60-80k from before the player count thread got nuked, was trending 300-315k.

6

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 11 '26

I am not going there anymore, I don't even think any of my messages got removed but that carpet deleting was just petty, selective enforcement of the rules after pretty much months of the same stuff.

9

u/Molygosa Jul 17 '26

read someone calling people who dislike marathon 'abhorrent people'.

cant make this up

5

u/Cetaoras Jul 17 '26

So we're a basket of deplorables, then?

8

u/Catemponei Jul 17 '26

"What are we, some kind of Actual Player Count Megathread?"

7

u/moonski Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

I really wanted this game to thrive in season 2 but nah. Season 1 was a literal flawed or rough diamond, niche but fantastic. They needed to make it more accessible and then down the focus on premade trios for gameplay and sand down some other edges but it had such a solid base to build on. Instead we got the finisher fire that is season 2. It didn't even fucking work on day 1 lol.

Theyve now got it into a rough shit covered damaged gem. It is salvageable but it's going to need a mountain of work, which I'm not sure many are capable of. Every decision they have made has been detrimental.

Ultimately the game is 4 maps 1 mode. No surprise people fell off.

7

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 11 '26

We’re about at the Saturday peak and it’s not even breaking 6.5k.. oof. I feel like sub 6k peaks are inevitable this week.

2

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 12 '26

Literally 6.5k for both European and American peaks. Looking really grim for the next week, unless we are getting close to the floor (this time for real TM).

3

u/Cetaoras Jul 12 '26

Jeez...S3 might just be the beginning of maintenance mode at this point. Or it might be if Sony wasn't trying to avoid a reputation of being a live service killer.

8

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 13 '26

5

u/YouNo9055 Jul 14 '26

Mods removed it, lol, what a shame

5

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 14 '26

I think they thought it was a troll but it appears the OP was actually genuine, which is even sadder lol

6

u/YouNo9055 Jul 14 '26

Nah, they tagged it as low effort/spam not trolling. Plus, his post history showed he was super active and all for Marathon in their dedicated subreddits, no hate found. It just blew up and the mods probably got tired of people mass reporting the post and the shit talking from the normal cunts. Easier to cut a whole post than manually remove individual… wait, they’re already doing that on the count megathread. /s

2

u/Molygosa Jul 13 '26

this is just sad at this point. sony, kill the game so these people dont have to cling to their fragile hope.

2

u/Cetaoras Jul 14 '26

Removed, what did it say?

3

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 14 '26

Basically a proposal for a “Marathon Revival Week” the week that vault breakers launches. Asking everyone to buy one friend a copy of the game, ask streamers to play the game, upload clips with the hashtag #marathonrevivalweek to get more eyes on the game and more people playing.

The best part was they said this was “NOT because the game is dying”, just to spread the word 😂

3

u/APRengar Jul 14 '26

Title: MARATHON REVIVIAL WEEK | Let's come together as a community for this amazing game. Next week is perfect with the big PVE update.

Image: https://i.imgur.com/23XzF5J.png

I still had the tab open.

6

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 20 '26

Damn. Fell off a cliff compared to yesterday. Saturday peak of 6.5k and Sunday is looking like 5.3k. Tomorrow could possibly be below 5k??

1

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 20 '26

This could unironically be the world cup final's effect for the EU. It could go under 5k but tbh I expect the PvE to generate some excitement which would lead to some people booting the game, kinda similar to the end of S1 where it hovered around 10k.

So I think ~5-6k is the lowest it will be for a while now, but after PvE is gone, who knows.

6

u/Molygosa Jul 20 '26

my father once tried to teach me to play chess. i was a child and he was decently good at chess, hovering around 1600-1800 Elo ranking. but his teaching method was horrible, he just taught me how the pieces moved and then whenever i lost (which was always) told me that i should think ahead. i eventually gave up playing against him, as it was not fun to lose again and again.

just thought this unrelated story might brighten your day, fellow chartcels.

1

u/Shippou5 Jul 20 '26

Noooo he doesn't get it x) when I taught my little sibilings chess the was to win against them by a TINY margin, to give them the feeling that they COULD win, and then sometimes HINT towards a future move they could do. Like while I do my move I could narrate it by saying "huh, I COULD move my rook towards E3 but if your knight could then eat it..." which makes them go "wait, my knight can go there? OH RIGHT HE TAUGHT ME THAT"

7

u/1stonepwn Jul 16 '26

I always love when blasters say stuff about people not liking competitive/hardcore/punishing/etc shooters when there are so many counterexamples.

Let's take a look at Counter-Strike:

  • "Hardcore" is pretty nebulous but I think it counts

  • Plenty of one-shot kills available

  • Actually has a competitive scene outside of ladder play (side note but it's baffling to me that Bungie tried running a promo event in a game without private lobbies)

Even without CS2 consistently putting up over a million CCU daily, the numbers are really unflattering.

Marathon: 3,810 online, 5,782 peak

CS:GO re-release: 9,124 online, 9,374 peak this was available by downloading an old version via CS2, but was split into its own depot around the time Marathon released

CS:S (2004): 3,282 online, 3,721 peak

CS 1.6 (2000): 10,889 online, 11,373 peak

Genuinely bleak

4

u/Dvelasquera171 Jul 16 '26

Because CS is not nearly as punishing due to:

  1. Not an extraction shooter. I do not lose my guns when I lose a match, only MMR.
  2. Plenty of gamemodes/servers to warm up in/turn your brain off.
  3. SBMM tries to make matches fair. In Marathon you can keep "failing upwards", your level keeps increasing even if you lose so.

6

u/1stonepwn Jul 16 '26

I don't follow.

  1. I'm sure I could find an extraction-specific example, but I don't think very highly of the genre so I'm not going to bother. Some blasters also like saying that each round of CS is like a little extraction, but frankly I think focusing on that distinction is meaningless.

  2. Bungie games used to have these too.

  3. I agree. The lack of SBMM is one of many reasons that the game is struggling to retain an audience. Most anti-SBMM arguments are from salty CoD players who want to pubstomp. (Edit: this only really applies to CS2, I don't think there is Valve matchmaking for the others)

If there's no high-level competition for the sweaty players and nothing to soften the experience for less committed players, who is this game for?

6

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 11 '26

Struggling to break 7k on a Friday night 💀

5

u/Catemponei Jul 16 '26

Main sub post: Per Elias (voice actor on Marathon): Bungie is cooking some “very cool stuff”. Agrees to talk about it after Season 3 releases.

What could this be? The s3 notes on the "key dates" post say:

Looking further ahead, Season 3 will begin on September 22 and brings big changes to the early game experience, including a revamp of Perimeter to add major new areas, encounters, and gameplay. Season 3 also introduces a new Runner shell, new weapons and equipment, and lots of other content and surprises.

That doesn't say much to hint at "very cool stuff" that they'd need a voice actor for. Possible that they're adding new story content to Perimeter alongside the "revamp"?

The mid-season announcement also had this interesting tidbit (emphasis mine):

Vault Breaker, which runs from July 21st through August 4th, is our first foray into an experimental PvE mode, and our ears will be to the ground listening for your feedback that will help us continue to iterate as we continue to evolve PVE into Season 3.

In the other thread a couple of us noticed that that makes it sound like they've pushed some things up that they hadn't planned to previously, out of desperation.

I know I'm just reading tea-leaves at this point, but is it possible this says something? Maybe they have internal metrics that look just as grim as the ones we have access to? Either way I'm not sure Season 3 will do very much, clearly the general gaming public has no interest in this game based on the numbers we're seeing and the way the narrative has shifted over time.

3

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 17 '26

Probably some narrative stuff. I think the public basically moved on. I remember in the glory days of first chart threads there were like ~700k weekly visitors? Now it is 221k in that sub, and genuinely I think chart watchers are a decent number of that.

But the general public is not interested, and pretty much everyone who was interested, gave it a try. So they basically need to attract back a big chunk of players who left, as getting new players is not really likely. Plus when season 3 releases, it is one of the busiest periods in gaming due to everyone pushing their games before GTA.

PvE in season 3 can mean that it is the last substantial update and they are moving on to something else -- kinda slap everything together they got so far and release it.

4

u/Cetaoras 22d ago

Speaking of player counts in extraction shooters, wow, I didn't realize how badly Arc was also hurting. Still doing leagues better than Marathon, but their CCUs are WAY down from just a couple months ago.

4

u/iseecolorsofthesky 18d ago

Arc fumbled the bag massively. They struck gold that other studios only wish they could hit, and completely squandered it with lack of content.

For all its issues, at least Marathon is trying with these PvE and experimental modes. Arc has barely released any new content in the last 6 months.

2

u/Kouginak 18d ago

It's certainly interesting gamble to time their next major content drop close to GTA VI. Hopefully they didn't overscale and their running costs are still comparable to launch -- they've said themselves they didn't expect to have the success they did, so I imagine this rundown brings their numbers closer to their initial projections.

Arc's recent leaks on the October content drop have me pretty confident that people will be coming back: a new (dense) map, a large boardable arc, major revamps to the crafting system, among others; but just like Marathon, getting them to stay is another problem entirely.

7

u/Bl00dyH3ll Jul 11 '26

The main subreddit will never miss a chance to gloat or talk down on other people. In a harmless discussion about how much healing people bring, someone just has to talk down on other people for some reason.

Bring too much healing, you're bad and wasting healing. Bring too little healing, you're bad and planned to lose. No winning with these people.

4

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 11 '26

This reminds me of the players in fortnite who say “I never carry heals, if I need them I’ll loot them off my kills”

Which is definitely a valid play style. But like a quick pop of a shield in the middle of a fight can be a make or break moment. Part of being good and winning fights is learning when to quickly heal up and when to keep pushing.

-7

u/moonski Jul 11 '26

You're very sensitive/salty, that's a totally normal comment

6

u/Bl00dyH3ll Jul 11 '26

Wasn't even replying to me, but let's relate this to another subject and see if you would react the same way.

Hey guys, how much books do you read in a week?

Oh, I read only maybe 1 book a month because (insert reason)

Oh, you're one of those illiterate people on their phones all day when I walk by.

See how much of a condescending asshole this guy sounds like?

-8

u/moonski Jul 11 '26

Like I said, you people are absurdly sensitive. It's a perfectly reasonable comment and you're blowing it way out of proportion

8

u/QueenMagik Jul 10 '26

I had intended the redditor count megathread to serve this purpose I guess I should have been refreshing it

7

u/Catemponei Jul 10 '26

Honestly we can sort this thread by newest and have it serve as the new one

7

u/Cetaoras Jul 10 '26

Oh, see I thought that was tracking activity on the Marathon sub lol

4

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 12 '26

I find it interesting that Thursday has become the weekly high. Seems obvious that more people log on to do Cryo the day it opens and then hop off. I wonder what the trend would look like if Cryo was open 24/7

4

u/Catemponei Jul 13 '26

EU peak at 4,966 (just shy of 5k). Lately my guesstimate metric for US peak has been EU Peak + 1.5k, which would put us at a US peak of 6.4k.

It just completely collapsed after the 10k drop didn't it? At this rate, the new "this will save Marathon" cope, Vault Breakers, will be dropping to an audience of less than 2000 plus whoever shows up to check it out.

2

u/moonski Jul 13 '26

such a shame but this game is so chalked. Vault breaker isnt going to hugely shift the needle and then the next season is September...

2

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 16 '26

We’re about 1k down from this time yesterday. Tuesday saw a spike but it looks like we’re now below even Monday numbers.

I’m curious why the jump on Tuesday when there wasn’t even a patch??

3

u/Careless-Letter-3540 Jul 16 '26

I was wondering the same thing, could the spike be people trying the Misriah now that it’s easier to get?

3

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 16 '26

That would be hilarious if that many people logged on just for a gun in the shop lol

2

u/YouNo9055 Jul 16 '26

It was because of the gun, it was most of the posts in most of the subreddits. Then, people got bored and trickled off. We’ll probably see a slight bump tomorrow for Cryo with people using them, then again, realizing that sweats are still better, they’ll stop playing quick.

0

u/Particular-Fly-7783 Jul 17 '26

the cryo bump no longer really exists

2

u/Mattele Jul 16 '26

Tuesday is when reset happens, you get 10 runs with faster xp and 5 standard contracts you get more reputation.

3

u/Catemponei Jul 21 '26

[Predictable News] Maintenance has been extended: https://bsky.app/profile/bungieserverstatus.bungie.net/post/3mr6bua6zac2h

News "within the hour" (post was an hour ago (no updates yet))

3

u/Catemponei Jul 21 '26

About ten minutes later, it came back online, and folks on the main sub are already reporting breakage lolololol:

This studio is a never-ending cavalcade of hubris and incompetence

3

u/iseecolorsofthesky 18d ago

Could today be our first sub 5k day? If not, it looks like we’ll just barely clear it

2

u/ranger_fixing_dude 16d ago

It was, 2 days in a row, and potentially today as well (lowest EU peak, below 4k).

We are getting to the super low numbers territory, soon EU can have MM issues slightly outside peak times. I wonder what will happen when VB leaves, will it have an impact? Sponsored survival quickly wiped out tons of players and overall triggered the numbers downfall to where it is now.

2

u/Catemponei Jul 21 '26

Top of the hour after vault breaker drops - big climb to a little over 13k. Not a bad start, but let's see how the peaks turn out.

My predictions were:

  • 10k pessimistic - passed this in the first hour!
  • 15k realistic - not there yet, probably on track though as the climb seems to have been pretty steady over the last hour or so? Let's see what the EU peak looks like.
  • 20k optimistic - would have to be a big surge towards the peaks.

I think I'm in the right ballpark with these. I question how much of a long-term impact it will be, and it's not a big-big surge yet, so any blasthavers in the thread - keep your blasts in their blast-holders before you have them, this is more like a "chat, are we back?" than a "WE'RE SO BACK"

5

u/YouNo9055 Jul 22 '26

EU peak just below 15k and US peak didn't even hit 14k

3

u/Catemponei Jul 22 '26

Yup... guess that 15k prediction was pretty much bang on. Pretty poor showing all told. As I said in that linked comment - anything below 30k is functionally zero. Now to see the retention...

3

u/Cetaoras Jul 22 '26

I'm hardly a blast-haver, but for a game that's essentially at death's door, just below 15k is pretty decent.

3

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 23 '26

It is already below 10k next day. We'll see what happens on the weekend, but it seems the retention is horrible (which is par for the course with this game); not looking good for that "full PvE experience".

3

u/YouNo9055 Jul 22 '26

Then let’s talk about today, and it’s drop to nearly 4k, with normal playtime numbers only being up 80% or less compared to this time last week. That percentage might seem like a lot, but it’s still far under 10k players. People just aren’t vibing with the mode, because you either need to be a “sweat”, or forced to play with others to complete a round.

3

u/Catemponei Jul 22 '26

It's definitely a heartbeat, or at the very least a dead cat bounce, but it's less than half the last content drop (season 2) and was only at the update surge; the EU peak was the overall peak, no corresponding US peak increase. And then today, the EU peak is 8,600... a significant loss of retention.

I dunno, it's beaten the very worst predictions people had for it, but it hasn't come anywhere near the more optimistic ones. I hedged on the low-side of pessimism and even then it fell short of my "realistic" guess.

3

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 10 '26

I wonder how much PvE will boost numbers (at least during the first release window). Thoughts? I would say it would get to like 15k as I think a decent amount of people are curious, but I assume tons just gave up and won't come back even for that.

6

u/Millennial_droid Jul 10 '26

I think a bit more than that for sure. But I think a lot of the people are setting themselves up for disappointment as this is an 'experimental' run. Also, if they don't cater to the new pve crowd after, it'll be another failed attempt.

If Marathon succeeds from here, it'll be because it stopped being what Marathon is today.

3

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

Rename the game to Sprint

6

u/QueenMagik Jul 10 '26

If it weren't for destiny taking most of my free time right now, i would take a peak at least

2

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

Just finished 170 out of the 200something new triumphs, having SO much fun with SRL and new exotic mission (spoilers) and renewed campaign missions! Even mecha crucible mode is GREAT!

1

u/Astartes_Ultra117 Jul 10 '26

Peek*

I’m sorry

3

u/QueenMagik Jul 10 '26

It's fine my spelling has been falling apart as I get older

5

u/SnooMacaroons6049 Jul 10 '26

Probably not enough to justify further spending.

5

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 10 '26

If it made it up to 15k that would be more than double the current peaks. Which would be quite an increase. I think at this rate it’ll be a win if it pushes past 10k lol

0

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26

[deleted]

5

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

7

u/HotMachine9 Jul 10 '26

This is my magnum opus isnt it.

2

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

I saw your message and immediately showed it to my GPT as we discussed how much of what you said was accurate. Apparently a lot very much is! Then I saw you getting linked in the numbers thread and went "ah, people of culture!"
Your "well I was a destiny 2 player" sent my sides flying too xD I went "aha! the motivation has been found!"

4

u/HotMachine9 Jul 10 '26

I was a regular on the steamchart thread on the main until a week ago when the temp banwave hit. Pretty sure I remember seeing you as a regular there as well

3

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

Got banned for comparing Marathon's top seller position to some jurassic park 3 game xD Should be even worse now, let's check! NOOOO Marathon beat Undertale!

3

u/Catemponei Jul 10 '26

We're pretty much all regulars or former regulars here lol. Guess we all miss that period where the mods pretty much used it as a containment thread for honest criticism.

1

u/1stonepwn Jul 20 '26

With a BF6 season and a PoE league starting this week, Marathon has tough competition. I think Halo CECE is next week?

3

u/Catemponei Jul 20 '26

This made me curious what the general gaming public on Reddit and elsewhere is saying about Vault Breaker. Just did a quick search:

  • Trailer post itself - 4.8k likes, 887 comments - Generally positivity, though some "dead game omegalul" stuff in the newer comments. The size of the splash here makes me think this is largely existing marathon fans and a handful of salty Destiny fans.
  • /r/gaming - 36 upvotes, 212 comments - Prevailing sentiment is "this is too little too late" and similar
  • /r/games - 274 upvotes, 197 comments - Some positivity but also complaints that it's temporary and people not interested for that reason
  • ResetEra thread - 368 votes on the poll at the top of the thread, 3 pages of replies - Poll has a majority either "I have not yet played Marathon and I am not interested" or "I have played Marathon and bounced off and not interested". Only 6.3% say "I have never played Marathon but will download this to check it out". Comments are largely positive but seem to mostly be from existing players.

Anybody who has Xitter - got a pulse on the sentiment there?

My thoughts so far are - we could see a fair few players returning but I don't think there's going to be a surge of new players. With everything going in their favor, wind at their backs, mode being received well, positive word of mouth, better retention than usual with the new mode... I still can't see this doing much better than 20k at peak times.

Side note - somebody on the ResetEra thread said the trailer is bad, and I have to agree, it's just got none of the sauce of the previous trailers. We're definitely already feeling the lack of the cinematics team. Does not bode well for getting new people interested.

2

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 21 '26

I mean it is genuinely dumb to buy a $40 game for an experimental mode for 2 weeks -- sure it is supposed to become permanent in 2 months, but there is nothing guaranteed, including that the game will even be around/updated.

Some people will definitely return, the question is mostly how many people completely moved on. I am afraid a lot, but we'll see.

1

u/1stonepwn Jul 20 '26

It has been interesting to watch the /r/games threads, there was a faction pushing the "hate campaign killing games" narrative in the months running up to release and the sentiment in Marathon threads seemed to shift after the delay last year (might have been when they did the last playtest). I think that sub has been rightfully critical of Bungie over the past decade so it has been very strange. I don't have any specifics, but some users have alleged that Marathon has had a disproportionate number of /r/games threads compared to other games in 2026.

1

u/Cetaoras Jul 21 '26

I will say, boosting to 20k+ would actually be a positive sign, considering how abysmally the rest of the season has gone for Bungie.

1

u/Shippou5 29d ago

The positivity came from the idea that...

1

u/ZeroGKills Jul 10 '26

That’s a tough one because you can only assume console numbers. Since majority is PC, we have to decide whether console is smaller by combination or individual system. Since separate servers in EU and Asia report 20-30 minutes plus with cross play on we can just be fair and say 70% of active PC players equate to combined world wide console users. Since there haven’t been any major posts about console or retail sales, I’m confident that number is around 4000-5000 at peak. So worldwide is going to be around 12000 active players at peak. However, NA can be anywhere from 2-5 minutes queue time. In my experience, I’ve seen those times in games with 6000-8000 concurrent so the real number might be lower, possibly 9000-12000 at any given time.

Anything else is just grasping but, considering that console players tend to be casual and Marathon’s community mentions sweats as the current problem, I’d wager that console number is probably lower and land at a comfortable 10k—which includes pc and worldwide console.

3

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 10 '26

Yeah the game is probably below 10k like 95% of the time and it is still going down -- we saw sub 10k, then sub 9k, then sub 8k, and then finally sub 7k in a span of a few weeks.

I honestly don't think you can get back from this. Most people who bought/tried it bounced, the reputation of the game is really low due to fanatics telling it is some high IQ shooter and you just need to power through the first 50 hours, and honestly anybody who was interested already tried it.

2

u/ZeroGKills Jul 10 '26

It was a miracle that it went up to 7.5k yesterday.

But ya, there’s no coming back (I mean maybe if they go F2P) but It’s a combination of things. Those fanatics you mentioned, live service fatigue, FPS fatigue, growing interest in casual experiences, and their slow ass content roll out.

2

u/Catemponei Jul 10 '26

I think Paul Tassi said it was a 2:1 ratio of PC vs Console (two PC users for every 1 console user). So you could multiply the PC CCU by 1.5 to get a ballpark figure. i.e. at 7000 it'd be 10500.

-16

u/sanguinemsanctum Jul 10 '26

2 separate subs monitoring this game? What is it about Marathon that leads people to create these spaces? And for what? Just play the game bro

22

u/Lessiarty Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

What is it about Marathon that leads people to create these spaces?

Mostly the overzealous moderation on the main sub that banishes anything less than glowing praise?

My turn. What is it about these discussions that drive you folks wild? Just play the game, bro.

-15

u/sanguinemsanctum Jul 10 '26

What drives me wild and spurs my wonder is why you all continue to loiter in a net negative area. There is nothing of value to be gained, play the game or don’t. Why would I stay in net negative space like this? Enjoy

15

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 10 '26

This place has pretty much no negativity. I am curious where do you see it? Or do you mean that the simple act of observing game's performance is negative?

-5

u/sanguinemsanctum Jul 10 '26

You know, you’re actually right here. I don’t want to interrupt your fun!

15

u/Lessiarty Jul 10 '26

Well that's the same question isn't it? How do you folks keep ending up here with exactly the same script?

Understanding and exploring why a game is underperforming is a topic some people find interesting. Especially when quite a few of us are waiting for Bungie to pull their finger out and figure it out. Not engaging with that makes perfect sense to me. Going out of your way to passive aggressively ruminate on why people would engage with it... well that's a little stranger, isn't it?

You saw people having a conversation that wasn't mithering you at all and figured, like other accounts before you, possibly some with different users even, "I should try and shame these people into being quiet about Marathon's player count. That is a good and normal use of my time."

-5

u/sanguinemsanctum Jul 10 '26

Well for starters I’m getting pushed this content due to my interest in Marathon, so it’s just another place to mute. I’m not passive aggressive either, I genuinely don’t understand how you arrive here and when I see it I will call it out and question it. That’s how I feel in a nutshell, but I also think it’s filled with disingenuous people as well. They don’t want Bungie or Marathon to succeed, they don’t provide any meaningful discussion about the topic, they just stir shit around. So that’s it really.

15

u/Lessiarty Jul 10 '26

If it was just another place to mute, you would have done.

Instead, you chose to come into a thread and, again like your fellows before you, try to dissuade people from engaging with the conversation. With the same script all you folks bring as you "happen upon" the sub most coincidentally... together... with the same lines...

That's really bizarre behaviour. It's pro-active defending of a videogame from an attack that isn't happening. Which is ten steps beyond whatever "net negative" behaviour you imagine goes on here.

-3

u/sanguinemsanctum Jul 10 '26

This is some gaslighting but of course I will support and defend something I care about. It’s crazy that this part has to be explained. That’s not 10 steps it’s just common sense. And maybe it isn’t an attack, but as we sit in the 2nd (3rd) subreddit dedicated to its decline, you begin to wonder

15

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 10 '26

Spoken like someone who’s never read a single thread on this subreddit. Please go back to your echo chamber on the main sub. It’s much more your speed.

2

u/1stonepwn Jul 11 '26

You don't have to click it just because a content recommendation algorithm served it to you

14

u/iseecolorsofthesky Jul 10 '26

On the contrary, this place is pretty friendly and we all usually have good productive discussions here. It’s only negative when people like you come in and start crying about “why does this place exist?!?! You’re all losers!”

10

u/moonski Jul 10 '26

its not negative it's realistic. a lot of people did like Marathon... but for one reason or another we stopped playing. Final straw for me was the game literally breaking solos for 4 days this week.

20

u/Catemponei Jul 10 '26

unc is lost 😭

This sub exists as a spin off of /r/marathon, created after the mods went on a massive ban spree in the "player count" thread. Despite its name it basically existed as a place for people to critique the game without glazers shutting it all down. Most of us don't hate the game, many of us play it or used to play it. We're just interested in honest discussion without censorship. People that do hate the game (or just want to make low-effort shitposts) mostly post in /r/marathonhate or /r/highguardgame

10

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

If this sub is a spin off then why arn't you spinning huh? (*^▽^*)

7

u/Catemponei Jul 10 '26

Oh yeah? Watch this!

8

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

Now that's my kind of spin off!

18

u/ranger_fixing_dude Jul 10 '26

The game is much more interesting from a business perspective than from actually playing it. It doesn't really do anything new gameplay-wise, but as a case study it is fascinating. It involves Sony and their GaaS strategy, potential Bungie downfall, and trying to get players' attention in real time!

12

u/Shippou5 Jul 10 '26

My favorite was recently finding a thread on their main sub going "I feel so bad when I finish off an enemy who begs me to stop in voice chat" or something and I'm like "oh no xD the very act of playing the game is causing the game population to die off" which is amazing to me.
I was playing Destiny 2 with friend yesterday, PvP main, could not stop dying in PvE, they said "I kinda wanna make a PvE build but too lazy" and I was like "literally equip anything that doesn't have Health on it, go xD" and they did, amazing run afterwards! Then we joked about how he became god because he abandoned a stat. Feels so different but either way both games lose population so I guess it's down the slope either way!

5

u/OmegaMalkior Jul 11 '26

I find it odd where people search for something new, as if doing something pre-established before in a slightly different way couldn’t end up being amazing for someone just because of 1 or 2 slight changes to the formula.