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Marathon releases to 87,000 players on Steam and 87% Positive Reviews (sponsored by coachmcguirk91)

Marathon breaking 24h peak ccu as we speak, 65k is within the reach :messenger_fistbump:
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And Opencritic has 18 reviews, a 76 score and only a 59% critic reco.

Lucky for Marathon lots of sites are holding off reviews till the content drop as per Bungie's reco, so the scores will be artificially inflated when they do their reviews with more content and any patches that come with the download.
Only 18 reviews, of which only around half a dozen aren't noname blogs, including a couple with Xbox in the name.

The CCU watch thread is 20+ more pages than the OT thread.
I think many people have been banned from that thread (including me):
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/marathon-ot-a-shell-of-its-former-self.1694165/post-271330461
 
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I just explained why they were wrong, quite often providing objective factuali data.

In this case, Marathon did a server stress free weekend before launch. Which, like demos/open alphas/open betas, isn't anything special. In fact Marathon only had a single open one before launch (like Arc Raiders to name an example), while others even had more.

I made an observation. What was wrong with it?

I never claimed Bungie invented pre-launch tests and if they did or did not, that changes nothing about my point.

Let's look at some of the information I used:

- Bonuses have previously been tied to review scores [FACT]
- Server Slam had a higher peak CCU than launched game (~145k vs ~88k) [FACT]
- Launched game average CCU is about the same as Server Slam closing CCU (~55K) [FACT]
- Server Slam gave people a chance to play the game and bounce off, therefore not buy the full game, therefore not leave a negative review [OPINION]

Are you saying my facts are wrong or my opinion/thought is wrong? I never claimed that as a fact, it was clearly a pondering as I seek to understand how things have panned out.

Your response was to say that Bungie didn't invent server slams and pre-launch weekends. Great. Wonderful. Somehow that makes my post wrong.
 
Are we expecting a third or fourth week peak for Marathon?

The games which peaked in their third or fourth week, did they have a lower second week than first week?
It's in the realm of possibility with the release of cryo. But that's a big maybe.
 
On the plus side, we are about hit a new milestone.

The CCU watch thread is 20+ more pages than the OT thread.

And isn't that what the medium of gaming is all about? Lots of people having a blast?

Wait till word of mouth gets out about the OT. It's going to see new peaks at week three.

Lots of other threads didn't peak till week three.

It's actually in the top 5% of all threads on GAF.

It's actually a success.

Stop comparing it to other popular thread.

See look at this thread over here that it's way more popular than that.

No, it's ok for me to compare threads, but you can't.
 
On the plus side, we are about hit a new milestone.

The CCU watch thread is 20+ more pages than the OT thread.

And isn't that what the medium of gaming is all about? Lots of people having a blast?
Based off trending, yesterday's peak was actually USA time (last weekend both days skewed more to Europe some reason). So assuming today's trend is similar to yesterday, today's peak 63k during USA later tonight might edge up a bit to 65k. But that assumes, USA gamers spike it up on a Sunday night as work and school are tomorrow. It is March Break I believe for many schools, so maybe there's enough students who will keep playing tonight. Who knows.

The peak right now is about 63k, which is about the same as Wednesday's number. If it edges up it will be about the same as Tuesday's. Last weekend, it was 77-78k.
 
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It went down a fair bit versus last weekend, but still has a reasonable count.

I think it's just gonna bleed a little bit week to week, but mostly stabilize at around a 50-55k base.

Doesn't seem to be bringing in a great deal of new players either and I question if it actually is capable of doing so. The longer in life these types of games get, the barrier to entry is often steep and frustrating.


I suppose it's good for a niche game; won't die immediately or any time soon, but I feel like folks think Sony/Bungie expected this to be niche and they'll be fine with it.

I don't see that happening, if I'm honest. I would expect that layoffs will hit, for certain. Battlefield is a testament to that fate.

Sure, Destiny 2 is *barely* alive and has to try and somehow hold onto what playerbase remains til Summer, but that(and Marathon) is not a lot for a LARGE studio that cost billions to acquire.
 
Based off trending, yesterday's peak was actually USA time (last weekend both days skewed more to Europe some reason). So assuming today's trend is similar to yesterday, today's peak 63k during USA later tonight might edge up a bit to 65k. But that assumes, USA gamers spike it up on a Sunday night as work and school are tomorrow. It is March Break I believe for many schools, so maybe there's enough students who will keep playing tonight. Who knows.

The peak right now is about 63k, which is about the same as Wednesday's number. If it edges up it will be about the same as Tuesday's. Last weekend, it was 77-78k.
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Yeah you can see the two humps on the graph showing how European peak starts to dip just before US starts to rise.
 
Are we expecting a third or fourth week peak for Marathon?
I have no idea, but I'd say nope. There are games that peaked in many different places, you never know when they are going to peak. But it's true that in case of the top GaaS/MP shooters there are several who peaked around their 3rd or 4th week, I don't know why.

Maybe it's because they may have their first meaningful postlaunch content drop there, and that same update includes the first highly requested fixes that solves at least partly some of the main criticisms. Which improves the word of mouth, which combined with weekend bump combines a good amount of new players, existing players and returning played combined.

Some other games peak months or years after launch due the release of some meaningful or highly requested new content. In some cases it's also caused by a big discount or price drop.

The games which peaked in their third or fourth week, did they have a lower second week than first week?
As I remember some yes, some no.
 
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Keeping 81% of its player base from the first weekend to the second weekend seems pretty solid. I did not think it would still be outselling Arc Raiders, 10 days after launch. The numbers will continue to go down until next major update. If Bungie were smart they wouldn't release end game map, Cryo, until the last week of March. Crimson Desert going to steal the attention for the next 10-14 days
 
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Yes, and can have a 150K. Several MP shooters had its peak on the 3rd or 4th week, or even years after launch.

Bad numbers according to you because of its CCUs, which as I shown are better than at the same moment many top performer MP shooters had at the same point. Which isn't mediocre at all.

If you learn to read you'll see it's a list of games that performed similar or worse than Marathon regarcing CCUs at the same day Marathon is today (their second Saturday), which didn't stop them to become some of the most successful games in the genre.

"If you learn to read'' the irony is insane when your entire list is cherry-picked garbage and intellectual dishonesty on steroids.

You claim these games had 'similar or worse' second-Saturday CCU than Marathon's 58k and still became huge successes. That's not what happened. That's not even close.
Let's break it down:
  • PUBG 75k? Bullshit. It launched Early Access Dec 20 2017 and was already exploding past 300k-500k by the end of December, hitting 1 million concurrent shortly after and peaking at 3.25 million. It wasn't "similar" to Marathon, it was growing like a rocket.
  • ARK 69k? Early Access dinosaur game with cheap entry, mods, and years of updates. Later free weekends pushed it to 200k+. Not comparable.
  • Overwatch 47k? The Steam version came years after it was already a global phenomenon on Battle.net. Zero relevance to a brand-new paid launch.
  • Halo MCC, Tarkov, Rust, R6 Siege, Payday 2, L4D2, TF2? Early Access, ancient launches (2009-2017 era), many cheap or free-to-play later, or Steam releases long after they already had massive audiences elsewhere. Tarkov was a cult hit in beta for years before its Steam drop.​
Please stop the fantasy world, these weren't "similar or worse on second Saturday and succeeded anyway", most succeeded because they were cheap/EA/F2P with years to grow, viral word-of-mouth, or completely different retention models (battle royale/survival = endless grind, not punishing extraction).

Marathon has not the trajectory of the games that actually became "some of the most successful in the genre." That's a game bleeding players hard.
Your list doesn't prove Marathon is fine. It proves you're desperately grasping at straws, comparing a premium AAA launch to the weakest random Saturdays of slow-burn Early Access legends while ignoring price, expectations, genre churn and actual trend.

Keep coping with fake numbers king, you just got cooked

Showcasing how stupid is to say that Marathon numbers are mediocre or a failure because didn't get better numbers than the some of the few top performing games ever in the genre.

You're the one coping and crying, and the one saying fantasies (in this case, Marathon supposedly 'bleeding players'), when I already shown multiple times examples of Marathon performing better than several top performing similar games in terms of CCU or even CCU loss or "retention" (the real user retention metric is the DAU loss, not CCU) at the same point launch aligned.

You're being a gaming flatearther.

Now Marathon is supposed to have invented open alpha/betas/stress test servers? And the 88% positive reviews for Marathon aren't valid, but let's say the 87% positive reviews of Arc Raiders are, despite it also having a open beta stress servers just before launch, which was even also called "server slam"?

To make open alpha, betas, server stress tests or demos aren't something special, most MP/GaaS games do it.

I just explained why they were wrong, quite often providing objective factuali data.

In this case, Marathon did a server stress free weekend before launch. Which, like demos/open alphas/open betas, isn't anything special. In fact Marathon only had a single open one before launch (like Arc Raiders to name an example), while others even had more.

You're projecting so hard you're practically a cinema at this point lmao. I'm not mad or 'crying', I'm laughing at how you're twisting yourself into knots to call this a win.

You keep saying ''not mediocre'' and ''on track for success'' while ignoring the reality. And yes, those 87-88% Very Positive reviews are pure self-selection bias and calling it out isn't invalidating them, it's basic pattern recognition.

Let me do the breaking, AGAIN, the free Server Slam filtered the pool perfectly: only the people who already loved the gunplay and loop dropped $40 and rushed to review.
Everyone who found it mid or frustrating just... didn't buy.
Same thing happens with every paid GaaS after a big open beta (Arc Raiders included, their reviews are inflated the exact same way).
Doesn't mean the game sucks for those who bought it. It means the score is artificially high right now and says nothing about long-term retention.

You're the one moving goalposts from ''too early'' to ''actually it's crushing it''. Calling me a gaming flat-earther' for stating facts, seriously?? Bungie didn't launch this thinking ''yeah 60k concurrent after 10 days is fin'' They needed sustained growth, not weekend cope spikes.

Noah Centineo Chef GIF by Allure
 
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[*]PUBG 75k? Bullshit. It launched Early Access Dec 20 2017 and was already exploding past 300k-500k by the end of December, hitting 1 million concurrent shortly after and peaking at 3.25 million. It wasn't "similar" to Marathon, it was growing like a rocket.
He's cherry picking March 2017 where it was a brand new game and had 75k CCU in week two as an early access game. Heck, at 75k in early access, it's was already close to Marathon's launch day 88k and already passed its second weekend. Final release was actually Dec 2017 when it was already up to a couple million. So right off the bat, he used PUBG's early access data vs Marathon's final release data to try to make absolute numbers as small a difference as possible.

He also purposely picked the Saturday weekend number, since Sunday was higher at 86k.

Of course what he didnt say was early access launch weekend the week before had Saturday/Sunday at 53k and 66k for PUBG. So you could see even in early access the second week increased about 30-40%. Marathon is trending down at about -15% (pending how it finalizes today), but yesterday peak alone was already down -23% (59k vs 77k).

And as you said, by the time Dec/Jan rolled around for PUBG's final release version it was already in the millions and growing even off a game already with millions in early access.

If there's one thing about Yurinka, he sure has a knack for trying to stretch the truth, mislead with numbers (hoping you dont check it yourself) and extrapolate any unknowns to fit his narrative. You can see that 75k for PUBG is technically a correct number, but he fudged the narrative and context between the games.

PUBG Early Access Data starting March 23, 2017
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PUBG Final Release Data on Dec 20, 2017
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He's cherry picking March 2017 where it was a brand new game and had 75k in week two as an early access game. Final release was actually Dec 2017. So right off the bat, he used PUBG's early access data vs Marathon's final release data to try to make absolute numbers as small a difference as possible.
Yep and I made a mistake btw as I said December was EA, when it was the full release. That's not really important since as you pointed at he is taking the numbers of the EA release.

And then he goes on telling me to "learn to read"and call me a "gaming flatearther"

Die Laughing Lol GIF
 
No matter what you're going to hate the game. Why is there a whole topic over steam charts for one game where everyone is posting up and downs for one platform constantly? This is clearly a troll thread.
 
Yep and I made a mistake btw as I said December was EA, when it was the full release. That's not really important since as you pointed at he is taking the numbers of the EA release.

And then he goes on telling me to "learn to read"and call me a "gaming flatearther"

Die Laughing Lol GIF
Exactly. Pretty hard to make Marathon close to PUBG using PUB's 2M+ CCU when it launched. lol

But give him credit. As I said, he does have a way of trying to paint a view in an odd way where he tries to skew numbers or what-if scenarios to go his way.

But tip for all: Always check Yurinka's numbers. And also make sure the context of them make sense too.
 
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No matter what you're going to hate the game. Why is there a whole topic over steam charts for one game where everyone is posting up and downs for one platform constantly? This is clearly a troll thread.
People have discussed other games too on CCU. Highguard was the most recent one before Marathon. Many games have CCU threads. Just some are discussed more than others. For example, here's a snippet from the bottom of my screen as I type. Veilguard, Star Wars Outlaws, Concord etc... there's many that have CCU discussed.

So dont pretend this is the first CCU thread ever on GAF.

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He's cherry picking March 2017 where it was a brand new game and had 75k CCU in week two as an early access game. Heck, at 75k in early access, it's was already close to Marathon's launch day 88k and already passed its second weekend. Final release was actually Dec 2017 when it was already up to a couple million. So right off the bat, he used PUBG's early access data vs Marathon's final release data to try to make absolute numbers as small a difference as possible.

He also purposely picked the Saturday weekend number, since Sunday was higher at 86k.

Of course what he didnt say was early access launch weekend the week before had Saturday/Sunday at 53k and 66k for PUBG. So you could see even in early access the second week increased about 30-40%. Marathon is trending down at about -15% (pending how it finalizes today), but yesterday peak alone was already down -23% (59k vs 77k).

And as you said, by the time Dec/Jan rolled around for PUBG's final release version it was already in the millions and growing even off a game already with millions in early access.

If there's one thing about Yurinka, he sure has a knack for trying to stretch the truth, mislead with numbers (hoping you dont check it yourself) and extrapolate any unknowns to fit his narrative. You can see that 75k for PUBG is technically a correct number, but he fudged the narrative and context between the games.

PUBG Early Access Data starting March 23, 2017
7Ab7F0Ddb0QbUmkQ.jpg


PUBG Final Release Data on Dec 20, 2017
0umGym3Df7bWUsRp.jpg


The Simpsons GIF
 
I do love some of the posts I catch where it's like "had a bad day, can't even spawn in dead instantly and just getting fukt, wrekt, fukt again over and over up the ass...... But I'm having a blast"

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The game didn't freefall after a week like some expected. Seems like whoever is playing the game is enjoying it.
Seems like the next big update is going to be meaty right?
 
This is a bit like being in a TLoU part 2 leak thread, though their memes were better. More fun than playing the game. I wonder how Hulst is coping?
 
By the way, no hate for the people enjoying the game, it's probably a fantastic game for those sort of folks, it's just the arrogance that Sony puts forth and Like I said, before, then putting aside single player games for this games and service trash
 
So... Game isn't dead. It's not a megahit but it sold and CCUs are more than decent.

I wonder if Bungo will learn the right lessons from this (somewhat) successful salvage?
They had to completely switch gears on both their communication and gameplay philosophies. And despite a divisive artstyle, they managed to sell an okay amount of copies. Who knows?

Or maybe they just boted the fuck out of their own game. They'd have the means to do it.
 
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Why do you guys bother with yurinka yurinka ? It's like talking to a brick wall. His entire debating tactic is stonewalling and writing posts so long nobody can be bothered to go through them.
 
Why do you guys bother with yurinka yurinka ? It's like talking to a brick wall. His entire debating tactic is stonewalling and writing posts so long nobody can be bothered to go through them.
100%

I thought I had developed Nacolepsy because I would suddenly fall asleep after reading the 1st or 2nd lines of his posts. It didn't happen on any other posts, but it turns out that his shit is just boring af to read.
 


The OG janitors are still there. 🤷🏻‍♂️

When someone says "From the makes of the iconic Toyota Corolla", they mean Toyota. They don't mean the engineers and designers who worked on the original Corolla. When Bungie says "From the makers of Halo", they're talking about Bungie the studio, not all the individuals who made Halo.

Or when a movie is advertised as "from the studio that brought you <insert movie>", they don't mean the original filmakers/producers. They're talking about the studio.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a studio/company advertising itself based on it's past successes.

Suggesting otherwise is being pedantic.
 
When someone says "From the makes of the iconic Toyota Corolla", they mean Toyota. They don't mean the engineers and designers who worked on the original Corolla. When Bungie says "From the makers of Halo", they're talking about Bungie the studio, not all the individuals who made Halo.

Or when a movie is advertised as "from the studio that brought you <insert movie>", they don't mean the original filmakers/producers. They're talking about the studio.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a studio/company advertising itself based on it's past successes.

Suggesting otherwise is being pedantic.
True.

It really comes down to how much someone puts into those claims.

For example, if Hershey's comes out with a new chocolate bar and a says "From the makers of Hershey's", does anyone care? I dont know. I wouldnt. But maybe some people care hoping the same R&D people work there.

But for games, I think gamers expect any studio saying From the Makers of.... to have more people directly making the new game than the old ones because it's an industry where gamers and devs are a lot closer in interaction and name drops, compared to the avg junk food eater knowing absolutely nothing about Hershey's or anyone who works there.
 
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When someone says "From the makes of the iconic Toyota Corolla", they mean Toyota. They don't mean the engineers and designers who worked on the original Corolla. When Bungie says "From the makers of Halo", they're talking about Bungie the studio, not all the individuals who made Halo.

Or when a movie is advertised as "from the studio that brought you <insert movie>", they don't mean the original filmakers/producers. They're talking about the studio.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a studio/company advertising itself based on it's past successes.

Suggesting otherwise is being pedantic.
🙄... 🫵 Naive
 
100%

I thought I had developed Nacolepsy because I would suddenly fall asleep after reading the 1st or 2nd lines of his posts. It didn't happen on any other posts, but it turns out that his shit is just boring af to read.
He's actually one of the few people I skip too. I enjoy reading all people's posts, but when he does those giant ones where he parses it out into 10 quotes and replies, I'm out.
 


The OG janitors are still there. 🤷🏻‍♂️


Those janitors helped alot with the original Halo.

The all night cocaine and stripper parties from making a wildly successful game that carried the OG Xbox and kicked off a historic IP left quite a mess and if those janitors didn't clean, how could Halo 2 have ever happened?

So when the modern team has parties for stabilizing 50k or 60k concurrent users.... you know... those same janitors can help with clean up the yoga and vegan buffet, or whatever it is that Bungie does these days.
 
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Those janitors helped alot with the original Halo.

The all night cocaine and stripper parties from making a wildly successful game that carried the OG Xbox and kicked off a historic IP left quite a mess and if those janitors didn't clean, how could Halo 2 have ever happened?

So when the modern team has parties for stabilizing 50k or 60k concurrent users.... you know... those same janitors can help with clean up the yoga and vegan buffet, or whatever it is that Bungie does these days.
They will clean those.

Just a matter of which extra curricular activity on company time and dime comes first. They already got rid of cooking and knitting classes, which seemingly demoralized employees as they complained about it. But I'm confident they added new beauties to 2026. Training classes in Rainbow Loom and shadow puppetry.

The company has struggled like crazy for years with Destiny 2 losing steam, lay offs and Pete Parsons saying the company is in the red. And the employees care more about cooking pasta and making socks. Goes to show the prioroties they got there.
 
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You know what would be peak comedy?

If someone clueless at Bungie in their misguided attempt to nab cotent creators sponsors Darksyde Phil to shill Marathon.

Oh the rage and the begging.

I would be capitivated like a car accident on the side of the road you can't look away from.
 
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Looks like no Sunday night USA bump. Trending down as everyone is going to bed. So the peak today will be 62,800. Which is almost the same as Tuesday's peak of 62,300. Last weekend, the peak was 77k.

So looks like weekend vs weekend peak, it'll be -18%.

Compared to launch day 88k, today's peak is -28%.
 
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