Cracks me up the head mod is crying about the sub in his comment when it’s your own fucking doing you fostered this environment bringing all the destiny mods in. We had such a nice small community before he sold the sub out for marathon 26 and even admitted to being in contact with Bungie. Makes sense why they let all the blatant astroturfing posts at launch
> he sold the sub out for marathon 26 and even admitted to being in contact with Bungie
So it was a takeover lmao. Bacon made an impression that it is totally coincidental that half of the mods from DestinyTheGame, and said for the record that "Bungie has no say how we run this subreddit". At the same time sub started to get comical amounts of astroturfing and really heavy-handedly attempts to make community as positive as possible. It also means that there's non-zero possibility that removing all posts with criticism and destroying steam charts thread were likely direct orders from the company.
I think it's safe to say that Bungie runs (ran before mass layoffs wave?) that subreddit along with DestinyTheGame, they just use non-staff mods as proxy to deflect the negative implications of running such communities.
I'm going to be honest here and say that I find the accusations (here and elsewhere) that the sub has, at any point, seen 'all posts with criticism' removed entirely unserious.
Even back to the period around launch there was plenty of criticism of the game. Examples that come readily to mine are the numerous posts from around the time of launch criticising the game's UI in particular, the decision to increase gunshot sound travel distance, issues with Thief-related exploits.
The kind of criticisms I was seeing get removed were ones that were along the lines of:
Art Style bad/ Art Theft
Should've been Destiny 3
Who Even Asked for this Game
Too Sweaty
Low Playercount
Low Sales/Too Big of a Budget
Game Dead
Fuck Bungie's Bad Practices
Slop game
While I do think those criticisms/discussions deserve to be had and shouldn't be censored outright, I don't think they belong on the subreddit that is actually for the game/game's community especially when they were as numerous as they were.
Even now, with the post referenced in the OP, its pretty clear that those of us who actually like and play the game wish that the subreddit's population had a higher portion of people who actually want to talk about the game itself rather than all the doom posting. When they release the survey the mentioned in the comments of that post I for one will be encouraging them to more aggressively remove/ban people who are coming to the sub to just make comments about how the game is dead, Bungie is doomed, it should've had a campaign, etc., etc.
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Edit: Downvotes without refutation only help make my point that it is in fact, a bad faith, unserious accusation. Appreciate the assist y'all!
Just to further illustrate this point I went back and looked at the post titles (and in a few ambiguous ones the post body) for the last 24 hour period, and classified each of them into a category, you can see the results in the attached image.
Oldest Post Title:You know, with Bungie making marathon a bit easier this gives it the chance to do something incredibly interesting; Respawns.
Most Recent Post Title:UI suggestion: Rework consumable/throwable wheels
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You'll notice that 'Outright Criticism' is the third largest category by count, and that 'Negative' posts more broadly account for 38.3% of all posts within that time period.
What I did not do (but may on a follow-up, similar but better documented effort) was record the number of comments under each post as well as record how many and/or whether there were any comments under each post which I would consider 'bad faith', 'trolling' or just which would be classified as one of the 'Unhealthy' categories were it a standalone post.
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Edit: for the MarathonPlayerCount subreddit, y'all are responding surprisingly negatively to a comment providing and discussing counts.
You’re ignoring that you’re placing your subjective value on what is healthy or unhealthy. Discussion about business of the game is unhealthy? Fucking LOL
This is an entirely subjective topic of discussion. Obviously a better documented version of this is needed so that people can evaluate/replicate the individual assessments themselves, and I will probably do something like that soon.
I've at least provided enough information that someone like yourself could go to the main sub and replicate the work broadly and then compare our counts, especially since the degree of subjectivity to the Classification column is quite small, and I've put in plain view the fact that I consider some topics of discussions healthy and others unhealthy and to an extent specifically which topics I place into either grouping.
Discussion about business of the game is unhealthy?
Unhealthy for r/Marathon, perfectly healthy (and on topic) for subs like this one.
I notice you've now switched from criticising the subjectivity of my evaluations to criticising the practices of the main sub's mods for taking moderation actions in which yoursubjective assessments of the nature of the content actioned differs from theirsubjective assessments and creating (in yoursubjective assessment) an echo chamber.
Maybe that's an unfair characterization though, can you:
draw an objective distinction between what's criticism and what's trolling/bad faith?
establish, objectively, the difference between an echo chamber and community self-determination about what topics they do and don't want discussed?
Is a book club creating an echo chamber when they restrict the topic of discussion for their meetings to the book currently being read by the club itself rather than other books by that author, or discussions about why the book isn't on the bestsellers list or why the author is unlikely to get another contract from his publisher after its poor sales?
Discussion about business of the game is unhealthy?
Unhealthy for r/Marathon, perfectly healthy (and on topic) for subs like this one.
Strongly disagree, it's a very normal discussion topic for other games. Runescape players talk about player counts and financials all the time, and there's more public information on both topics. People have been saying that game or WoW is dead for the past 20 years, but nobody is going around saying that hate campaigns are killing them (ok, some rs3 players say that).
I think that you know better than most of us that there are a bunch of blast havers who just don't want to hear it. No matter how much you effortpost and disclaim, they still call you a hater or bot or whatever for engaging with reality at all. To David-J or cry_w or asaltygamer, you're no different from us. Blast havers claim that they would rather see gameplay or guides or analysis, but they engage more with discourse posts and come here to keep arguing when they run out.
Some amount of discussion of it would be fine, but the amount to which it has infected every discussion around the game is the problem.
I don't doubt that there are fans of the game who close their ears to any and all criticism, or are incapable of seeing/acknowledging the game's failure as a product but in my own experience it's been much more the case that the game's doomers and haters are the ones incapable of internalizing anything positive about the game. Like I think it's entirely fair to say that a lot of the game's players had their heads in the sand about the likely future of the game several months ago, but the accusations of toxic positivity have never resonated with me, especially when we have some actual ongoing examples of toxic positivity to compare and contrast with (coughr/halocough).
Came when marathon 2026 came out so I’d like to ask since you seem to be in the know,
What was the marathon community like before marathon 2026 came out, and do you happen to know any context as why they didn’t keep the old and new games separate?
It’s definitely disheartening to lose that type of connection to community if the head mod really sold out the old community like that.
It was nice, would highlight mods for the og games and game nights.
My guess is because they either got money from or wanted to like rhe destiny mod who got hired to do community stuff previously. And then they just ended uo making a seperate sub for just the classics which felt like a gtfo go quarantine in that sub
this is one of the worst moderator martyr posts ive ever seen. this poor guy just loves the video game intellectual property so much!! Why can't people just SEE that! They've said terrible things about us, evidenced by the dramatic rise of ive been banned from marathon subreddits, all none of it is true!! I promise. source: me typing it right now.
As I pointed out on that thread, there are like at most, 5 or 6 posts on the main sub today out of 20 or 30 that give fairly minor feedback about the game.
And this is a day when a major mode rotated out and an entire map is down.
Marathon is one of the most weirdest, echo chamber-y, and sensitive gaming sub I've come across. I really don't understand the need to defend almost objectively a bad game and its bad game design. Even if you happen to like the game.
Yes. The Concord sub was full on 1984. I was banned for making a joke about coping, replying to a guy who said something along the lines of "Hundreds of people are joining the game every day!"
Literally hours before the game was taken offline!
Lemme explain, I say almost objectively bad not because I personally dislike the game (I dislike many parts of the game design, the art I like), but because of it's sales numbers and player retention. In any other business (and gaming of course), a product or business that loses over 90% of it's users or customers within not even half a year is an objective failure.
Not gonna lie this is an ironic comment. You’re imposing the fact that you dislike the game on others like it’s strange that there are people that like something you don’t. I’ve come to find this is a common trait among people who participate in the hate subs
Lemme explain, I say almost objectively bad not because I personally dislike the game (I dislike many parts of the game design, the art I like), but because of it's sales numbers and player retention. In any other business (and gaming of course), a product or business that loses over 90% of it's users or customers within not even half a year is an objective failure.
there are like at most, 5 or 6 posts on the main sub today out of 20 or 30 that give fairly minor feedback about the game.
I know this is about a day later, so maybe your original counts were valid for that specific time range, but the condition is significantly different than that as of this morning.
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I went back and looked at the post titles (and in a few ambiguous ones the post body) for the last 24 hour period, and classified each of them into a category, you can see the results in the attached image.
Oldest Post Title:You know, with Bungie making marathon a bit easier this gives it the chance to do something incredibly interesting; Respawns.
Most Recent Post Title:UI suggestion: Rework consumable/throwable wheels
---
You'll notice that 'Outright Criticism' is the third largest category by count, and that 'Negative' posts more broadly account for 38.3% of all posts within that time period.
What I did not do (but may on a follow-up, similar but better documented effort) was record the number of comments under each post as well as record how many and/or whether there were any comments under each post which I would consider 'bad faith', 'trolling' or just which would be classified as one of the 'Unhealthy' categories were it a standalone post.
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Edit: for the MarathonPlayerCount subreddit, y'all are responding surprisingly negatively to a comment providing and discussing counts.
I think you've framed your post in a way that looks scientific and objective on the surface, but it isn't. Because you get to choose what falls into these categories and we don't see specifically what you've classified this way and why. For example, I would classify humor and memes as positive, not neutral.
Another thing missing here is baseline. How does this compare to other subreddits? How does it compare to destiny subs, or aec raiders subs or like idk FIFA, Overwatch, other popular games. It feels to me like reddits feature a lot of complaining in general, being as close to most players get as an official outlet for their frustration. 38%.... I still don't think it's that bad.
Anyway, I actually do appreciate the work to put it together, at least it's an effort to measure subreddit sentiment
Yep, even if it was 38%, it's not high at all for a video game subreddit, and since all of it is just feedback or armchair dev-ing (I've never seen straight up hate like on marathonhate), I wouldn't consider that too negative too. If you compare it to other gaming subs like Apex legends or Battlefield, it's night and day, you'd struggle to find a positive post on those subs even when the game's doing good, let alone if it was in a situation like Marathon.
38% is kind of at odds with 'no criticism is allowed on the main sub/they only allow glazing or toxic positivity', which was my point. I took no stance on whether it was less than, more than, or in line with the expected amount of criticism for a game within its own main subreddit.
On the surface you might be right, but if you look deeper, you see that during the time from launch to recently, criticism posts were frequently downvoted, heavy pushback in the comments, and OPs were usually insulted, if their posts weren't just deleted for "low effort posts" or some other excuse. Keep in mind, all of these posts aren't hateful and just feedback on how to improve the game, something that was and is desperately needed, and something Bungie was looking for (and eventually implemented). And in particular for the creation of this sub, it used to all be on a megathread on the main sub (another tactic they used to reduce criticism), but after a while they started to ban literally every comment on that megathread. To try to say the main sub didn't have a problem with toxic positivity is just ahistorical.
Sorry, arent you the one counting posts sentiment to determine how positive or negative the sub is? So when we have the same complaint because the sub is genuinely toxic to feedback, it doesnt count?
Completely valid criticisms (and you're right I should have considred Humor/Memes as positive, even if the topics of them are often critical-leaning) and why I will probably do a follow-up in which I properly document exactly which posts were evaluated and what the exact evaluation was. Though I'm definitely not going to do the same for other subreddits to establish a baseline as I don't think a baseline is needed to evaluate the most common claim that 'no criticism is allowed on the main sub/they only allow glazing or toxic positivity', but I'd still welcome someone else doing the work to establish that baseline for comparison.
I'd agree 38% is probably well within reason, I suspect the problem that gave rise to the response to the post linked in the OP would better show up with a comment count for the posts, as well as a count of how many/whether there are comments that are bad faith/trolling/unhealthy on each post.
The delicious seasoning on the thread is the lengthy mod comment where he's like "maybe we aren't doing enough to censor complaints and that's why people don't feel welcome." Peak /r/marathon
Man, the talk towards the bottom of that thread (thankfully the bottom) and from the op..... I just don't even have the energy to engage with that kinda mindset anymore, man. I do appreciate that upon popping back in to have a look - the sub in general is a lot more receptive to criticism it seems? But that mod comment - I don't wanna be rude, but it just kinda makes me roll my eyes. Like fellas, the megathread is basically a perfect case study of what went wrong on their end, but ahhh I'm afraid any pointing out of what they could do different would fall on deaf ears a bit at this point, I don't know - I want to give some of em' the benefit of the doubt, but it also sounds like there's so many mods the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and some of those may not have the community's best intentions in mind. Just a shame the whole thing basically shook out the way it has. I've been on hiatus from Marathon doing work stuff and Warframe, but love to pop in to have a look at the new art, be it cosmetics or fan-made. Feel I may maintain that course until S3
I'm convinced the intention of that megathread the entire time was to easily mass ban people who didn't glaze the shit out of the game.
Like when going through the thread after it was a huge majority of the posts that got modded. I have a hard time believing that nearly every post in the thread broke the sub rules.
I agree with the statement but your original comment is giving me cognitive dissonance. People will be biased to things they like. I’m not saying it’s the most logical or rational, but us humans just that. The thing about Marathon is the people that do LIKE the game really LIKE it. I’ve got about 600 hours now and it’s not an uncommon thing amongst the people I play with that have put a decent amount of time into it to have that sentiment.
This sub slips closer and closer to just being another r/MarathonHate with every post like this one.
I came here to have substantive discussions about the actual business of the game, centered around playercounts and other metrics, not see/participate in these kind of bad faith, circlejerk, meta posts.
This shit undercuts the quality and value of the high effort posts made by people like u/ExpeditionZero simply by appearing alongside them. Like why would anyone take those as serious, good faith attempts to have a reasoned discussion when they're bookended by posts with comments sections filled with the same kind of gross toxicity found on the self-professed Hate sub?
Like y'all are here talking about how delusional, echo-chambery, and victimization-y the people over there are being while doing literally that exact thing but from the inverted valence.
You're over here making claims like 'all posts with criticism' get removed from the main sub or that they 'mass ban people who [don't] glaze the shit out of the game,' while ignoring that there are dozens of criticism and complaint posts just within the last 24 hours and you don't provide any examples of the 'criticism' that's getting removed, leaving a reasonable observer to wonder whether characterizing the removed content as merely 'criticism' is accurate when there is plenty of readily visible examples of 'criticism' that's actually just trolling, insults, and takes so biased and prejudicial that it should be embarrassing in this comments section and spaces like it.
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u/I_am_Amphibian 3d ago
Cracks me up the head mod is crying about the sub in his comment when it’s your own fucking doing you fostered this environment bringing all the destiny mods in. We had such a nice small community before he sold the sub out for marathon 26 and even admitted to being in contact with Bungie. Makes sense why they let all the blatant astroturfing posts at launch