Marathon sport director Joe Ziegler leaving Bungie doesn’t, by itself, imply the corporate is in hassle. Folks go away jobs. He could have obtained a wonderful supply elsewhere, fancied a change or just determined that spending a number of years making an extraction shooter was fairly sufficient extraction taking pictures for one lifetime.
However nothing occurring at Bungie exists in isolation anymore.
Ziegler is leaving just four months after Marathon launched, at a time when the sport desperately must construct momentum. Assistant sport director Del Chafe III is stepping as much as substitute him alongside creative director Julia Nardin, so Bungie no less than has skilled folks able to take management.
Nonetheless, dropping the one that guided Marathon by means of growth and launch is hardly ideally suited when the sport’s future is so intently tied to Bungie’s personal.
And proper now, the numbers don’t look good.
On the time of writing, Marathon has a 24-hour peak of just 6,435 concurrent players on SteamDB, down from an all-time peak of 88,337. That is a gigantic decline for a live-service sport that solely launched in March.
What makes it worse is that Season 2 launched at the beginning of June, bringing a brand new map, weapons, enemies, development adjustments and experimental sport modes. It briefly pushed Marathon’s Steam numbers again into the 30,000–40,000 vary, giving Bungie a much-needed glimmer of hope.
Sadly, that bump disappeared virtually as rapidly because it arrived. The sport is now again to peaking at just a little over 6,000 gamers per day.
Steam numbers by no means inform the entire story as a result of Marathon can also be out there on PlayStation and Xbox. Nonetheless, previous estimates from Alinea Analytics suggested that 68% of Marathon’s sales were on Steam, in contrast with simply 19% on PlayStation 5 and 13% on Xbox.
Paul Tassi was additionally beforehand informed by sources that the console viewers “actually don’t look after this factor.”
Assuming these estimates are moderately correct, Steam just isn’t merely one small part of Marathon’s viewers. It’s the sport’s most necessary platform and subsequently a reasonably robust gauge of its general well being. And that gauge is at present on hearth and emitting sparks.
Maybe Bungie can nonetheless flip issues round. The studio is including extra PvE-focused experiences and Marathon has obtained a reasonably constructive reception from most of the individuals who have caught with it. Stay-service video games have recovered from unhealthy launches and low participant counts earlier than. And Bungie declare they intend on supporting the sport for the forseeable future.
However Marathon doesn’t have the posh of quietly discovering its toes over a number of years. Bungie wants it to work now as a result of they’re in a tenous place.
Sony recently cut 292 jobs from Bungie’s Bellevue office, with the layoffs affecting many of the Future workforce and even some folks engaged on Marathon. As soon as the most recent cuts are included, Bungie has reportedly misplaced greater than 600 workers throughout three rounds of layoffs since Sony purchased the corporate in 2022.
Sony has also taken two impairment losses against Bungie worth approximately $765 million in total. In plain English, Sony has repeatedly regarded on the studio it paid $3.6 billion for and concluded that it’s not value as a lot as anticipated.
Destiny 2 has now received its final live-service content update, ending lively growth after virtually 9 years, royally pissing off lots of people who nonetheless performed. In a barely ironic twist, the announcement that Future 2 wouldn’t get any new content material brought back players in their droves, the type of numbers that the sport actually wanted to maintain it alive over the previous yr or two. Disgrace they didn’t flip up when it mattered.
You may assume that will free Bungie as much as start work on Future 3, however based on earlier reporting, Destiny 3 is neither in production nor greenlit. Bungie reportedly has no different authorized sport in lively growth, both. There are concepts being pitched and initiatives sitting within the imprecise world of “early incubation,” however nothing concrete that may take over if Marathon can’t maintain the lights on.
That leaves Bungie in a fucking terrifying place. Its established moneymaker is not receiving new content material. Its workforce has been severely decreased. Sony has repeatedly written down its worth. Its latest sport has misplaced most of its gamers inside 4 months, and the one that directed that sport has now left the corporate. Oh, and no matter new mission they provide you with will more than likely not be launched till properly after 2030.
Sony will most likely proceed giving Marathon time to seek out an viewers. It spent far an excessive amount of cash on Bungie to drag the plug with out making an attempt the whole lot first, and there may be nonetheless loads of worth within the Future title, Bungie’s know-how and the expertise that is still on the studio.
However persistence just isn’t infinite, particularly after a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} in impairment losses and several other rounds of layoffs.
Except Marathon can stabilise its viewers and start rising once more, it’s troublesome to think about Sony persevering with to fund Bungie as a significant standalone developer whereas ready years for one more mission to emerge from incubation.
That doesn’t imply Bungie is about to shut tomorrow. However between Marathon’s collapsing numbers, the shortage of one other sport in manufacturing and the sheer scale of the cuts already made, the way forward for one in all gaming’s most iconic studios now seems balanced on a knife edge. May we be taking a look at a world with out Bungie? And would that be worse than a world the place we’ve a Bungie that’s a pale shadow of its former self?
It’s a shitty time to be a fan of the business, isn’t it? So many historic, iconic studios are in danger proper now. Unhappy instances, my associates. Unhappy instances.
