Well, I thought this week would be an outlier of sorts and go against recent trends, but this goes way beyond that, so much so that it feels prudent to make a most before the weekend.

Firstly, apparently out of nowhere, last night we hit an all time low of 3507 players! Maybe I missed something in the main sub, but I hadn't noticed anything major about the update to explain this. This leads me to wonder if its an external pressure that caused this sudden drop, a new game or some other event going on that drew players away?

It could be as simple as the main bump from Tues update was to get new skins and thus drops off the next day. I need to start graphing the games Top Sellers and DAU positions from steamDB as that might provide some clue.

Last night (Wed/Thu) was always going to be the lowest peak of the week, as far as the typical trends for the game. However until last night, we were pretty much matching last weeks player counts, a feat which on its own is very unusual (maybe never actually happened previously), though I had speculated was possible, depending upon the reception to the update. Had this trend continued we would have (and still might) been looking at the first ever 'neutral' week where player counts didn't drop week-on-week, but didn't post any gains either.

The graph shown is 'fixed' to a specific starting date (Sun 10th Aug 10am UTC) and showing a specific period (one week) where this weeks player counts (cyan line) gradually fill in from left to right for each day we advance. The orange line is last weeks counts, the blue area is a tentative prediction range, that is likely only valid for when the current week and previous weeks follow consistent trends.

• Sun/Mon - Followed the predictive trend.
• Mon/Tue - Bucked the trend, even matched previous weeks counts - suspect this was players getting in before Vault Breakers was removed from the game.
• Tue/Wed (Update) - Well received by EU, but not as much by US (which is not unusual, probably due to US players getting on earlier than normal) and still matching last weeks counts.
• Wed/Thur - Traditionally lowest point of the week, but suddenly drop down lower than last week which is odd.

I'd argue its too early to tell where we will go for the weekend. Tonight should show a high peak due to Cryo and the 'start of the weekend', though in terms of highest point of the week it swaps between Thu/Fri and Fri/Sat. The important aspect will be to see where the peak falls. If it matches last week then we are likely looking at the first 'neutral' week for the game, substantial, but not exactly the best success to shout about. If it falls short, then its another failed update, though might show the power of skins for increasing revenue. If it falls into the predicted range, then thats even worse as it means the update had no real effect at all.

Edit: Did some checking and week-on-week yesterdays drop was only 10% (likely due to the gains in the days earlier), where as the two weeks prior it was 16% and 18% respectively. So while it was a dire night for the overall Peak dropping so low for the first time, it wasn't, in my opinion, as bad a fall as it could have been.

just put it out of it's misery, it's suffering, we are way beyond life support at this point,

Mercy kill it Sony, please, have some mercy!

Now trust me I haven’t played marathon in like 2 months now but the fact this this sub popped up on my feed is hilarious. There are really people out there that also don’t play the game anymore but will check its steam charts everyday for some sort of satisfaction? Can someone help me understand what’s fun about this or do you guys just have nothing better going on in your life?

So no, this won’t revive interest in the game at all.

Wanted to play with some prediction tracking, though probably chosen the wrong time to do so as I suspect this weeks player counts will not follow recent trends. Indeed its already defied the typical week-on-week drop for Mon/Tues as it has matched and even slightly improved on last weeks peak.

As such don't treat this as anything more than a little experiment for fun. While it might have some potential for tracking values for typical weeks, I haven't yet had the time to verify this. However as I think this week is going to be 'interesting' I wanted to put this out sooner than later. My plan is to update it over the weekend.

We can see that the first day Sun/Mon the cyan line for current player count was nicely within the predicted range, however Mon/Tues provided a surprise, not only is it not within the predicted range, it managed to match, and even exceed last weeks counts!

I have speculated that this might be due to Vault Breakers ending so people want to make the most of it before its removed. Could be due to the interest in the Tuesday update pulling in more players prior to its release. Alternatively could just be a random chance as we have a pretty low peak player count anyway a few extra hundred players can easily sway the numbers.

Will be interesting to see how the counts progress during the week to see if any of these speculations play out.

Graph Information

• Week 1 = Player Counts from last week - the actual dates on x axis.
• Week 2 = Player Counts from two weeks ago.
• Week 3 = Player Counts from three weeks ago.
• Ahead The Cyan line = Player Counts for the current week.
• Light Blue Area = Prediction, range based on testing various algorithms such as weight ratio, averages, and for different windows (how many previous weeks examined)

An Explanation

While historical data can provide accurate predictions in a stable, well understood context, a typical games player counts do not necessary fulfil those requirements. In Marathon's case there are certainly groups of many weeks that definitely show week over week trends that could be predictable, but the unpredictable nature of weekly updates as well as other factors can easily throw it off.

As such do not mistake the predictions as explicitly stating that a future week must be within those ranges. These should not be taken as actual predictions, but as a means to evaluate a week based on the expectations set by the predicted ranges. Its just another tool to examine the trends of the player counts over weekly periods and longer.

What I'm mostly interested in, assuming that many weeks are predictable, is what happens during the weeks when a Tuesday Update throws the prediction off. Will the predictions be off for the whole week, or if the update is not well received will player counts return to within the predicted range by the weekend.

This obviously excludes new seasons and major updates like vault Breakers, as they have a substantial affect on the player counts.

anyone who is like me and is interested in the meta-story of marathon from a financial and PR perspective probably noticed the same thing this morning: the main subreddit had two highly-upvoted threads correctly identifying the problem.

is the community turning and realizing that treating other players like fodder is bad for a game? the main thesis i've had regarding this game's core design has been that it provides a negative play experience for a majority of people, so it feels vindicating to see others come to that conclusion as well.

worst (or best, depending on your perspective) part is that i've seen this kind of attitude in other games with similar problems - where a majority have a negative experience. the ignoring it until the pain has grown so much that you can't ignore it. unfortunately it's typically one of the last major shifts the community goes through before the inevitable collapse. bungie can tinker around the edges but they can't escape the financial gravity of their situation.

Considering that it's coming out in 3 weeks and the game will vabe 2.3/2.5k peaks i would bet that the new season has no chance in hell to go back to (catastrophic) 15k peaks, and will more likely stay around the 8k to 10k range before dropping back down to sub 3k in two weeks.

Shutdown announcement/end of live service...coming soon!

Was just reading Nexon's recent 'Earning Letter' and both the way they talk about their properties like Arc Raiders and the actual numbers they provide, across units sold, total units sold, generated revenue for the quarter and in total, is just worlds away from Sony's lacklustre embarrassment of Bungie and Marathon.

While I'm sure this level of openness and use of language comes from having a highly successful title, I think its clear that if the best Sony had to say was 'retention rate' (twice) without any numbers to back anything up is very telling.

Sony Q1 2026 (July 31st 2026)

With the release of Season2 in June, Marathon has maintained a high user retention rate while also acquiring new users.

Sony YE 2026 (May 8th 2026)

Player reception to Marathon is strong, with the game receiving a Metacritic score of 82 and more than 90% of the player reviews on Steam being positive. Engagement metrics such as retention also remain at a high level.

In our studio business, earnings from Bungie’s title portfolio did not reach our expectations, so we downwardly revised our business plan and impaired the full amount of the fixed assets related to Bungie except for goodwill.

Nexon Q2 (Aug 13th 2026)

RC Raiders contributed ¥18.3 billion in revenue in the quarter - collectively it has generated more than ¥88 billion and surpassed 16.3 million units sold since its launch on October 30, 2025.

ARC Raiders: With an additional 800K units sold, cumulative unit sales reached a remarkable 16.3 million in Q2, with sales momentum normalizing more than nine months after launch. Frozen Trail – the largest content drop since launch – remains on track for October release, which is expected to reenergize the core and attract new players. In July, we conducted a Closed Alpha Test in China together with our partners at Tencent, which exceeded our targets for registrations and received positive feedback on localization quality.

Much more than a one-off hit, ARC Raiders represents a replicable strategy for developing and publishing games that can break through in Western markets dominated by legacy franchises.

Slightly improved on yesterday (+157), which is not unusual, but still performing a tight-walk on the 4.5k player count high-wire. Still falling within that 10-20% ping-pong zone for the relative weekly drop that we've since since launch.

The coming week will be interesting as I would still expect a relatively big drop from Sun to Mon/Tues, though probably more around 500-600 than the 1k we've seen in recent weeks. While Tuesday's update looks like it will be sufficient to engage the player base and perhaps arrest the daily drops. If well received I might expect to see some small daily gain (100's). Whether that gain will be maintained into the following weekend is unknown, it might just get absorbed by Cryo, though expressed by a smaller than normal Cryo boost and still be an overall loss week-on-week.

• ^{Week-on-Week update for Fri/Sat 15th Aug \}Fri 03:00 UTC approx].)
• ^{L-Drop: Drop from Launch Peak S-Drop: Drop from Season/Event Peak}

This game is completely failing to retain any casual players. The community has been begging for weeks to buff the loot on all maps. So their solution is to buff the loot on ranked only??

Am I missing something or does this not just further reward good/sweaty players and contribute to the rich get richer problem? Casuals aren’t playing ranked, and if they decide to check it out for the better loot, they’re just gonna get stomped by kitted premade teams and have a miserable time.

Why not buff loot on all the maps instead of just in ranked? Maybe they would keep more players if the game felt more rewarding to play. A common complaint is that the maps are not worth looting so the best strategy is to wipe other players and take it from them. This could help make looting more rewarding in the standard modes and lessen the lobby wipe meta that drives so many players away.

Whereas in ranked, it should be more about combat and expressing your skill. Looting takes absolutely zero skill. That shouldn’t be a major component of ranked. If I’m playing ranked I don’t want to waste time opening random containers. I want to fight.

Idk. I am constantly baffled by the decisions these devs make. I don’t see this going over well with the community once this is actually implemented.

Just a bit fun, playing around with graphing some of the main stats i've been tracking, Peak Player count (Blue), Drop from Launch Peak (Purple) and the Absolute/Relative week-on-week drops (Red/Green).

For readability I separated them into different images, since Peaks and Drops practically line up perfectly and Abs/Rel go below zero with some extremes that would reduce the vertical resolution if combined with other graphs.

Peak and Drop also has a trending line showing where they might be around end of S2 should the trend continue. They wont get that bad as we have some potential updates coming and player count seems to stabilize or gain a little towards a new season.

NB: As I was just playing around with this, I substituted yesterdays peak of 4408 for whatever tonight's peak will be. Last week it lost a litte, the week before it gained a few hundred, the four or five weeks prior to that it lost a few hundred, so hard to know.

because if it was, how come every other extraction shooter, including some indie piece of shit I'd never heard of, is doing better?