Marathon Delays New Content And Ditches Seasons As Bungie’s Extraction Shooter Fights For Its Life

Marathon‘s had a really rough summer, and it doesn’t look like the mood is about to change for Bungie’s remaining live-service sci-fi shooter anytime soon. The studio announced that a September seasonal update has been delayed until December. In fact, the seasonal model is ending altogether. “Addressing [player] feedback requires us to change both what we’re building and how we deliver it,” the studio said on Monday.

“We previously shared plans for Marathon’s next major update to launch on September 22,” Bungie wrote in a new blog post on September 14. “We know many players were looking forward to it, and we appreciate your patience. We are adjusting our plans to ensure the update meets your expectations.”

The update continued:

The content originally planned for September will now arrive as part of our Symbiosis update on December 8. Alongside the new Runner shell, permanent PvE experience, and refreshed Perimeter zone, the update will also include a social space/firing range, an experimental TDM mode, and improvements to new player onboarding.

Before then, we’ll release a smaller, focused update on October 6 that resets progression and the in-game economy, refreshes rewards, and improves the live game, while giving the team the time needed to deliver the larger experiences planned for December and March.

We’re also moving away from a strict seasonal schedule. Instead of tying major updates to fixed seasonal deadlines, we’re giving the team more flexibility to build, test, and improve features before they are released.

Since launch, you’ve told us Marathon needs more depth, more variety, stronger progression, and better reasons to keep playing over the long term. We agree. Addressing that feedback requires us to change both what we’re building and how we deliver it.

Bungie is promising the October update will bring a progression and economy reset, a new reward pass, further quality-of-life improvements, and additional live tuning and balance changes. None of that will move the needle for anyone already burned out on the Marathon, and it probably won’t even be enough to keep many diehards sticking around. The two months between October and December will instead be for “running gameplay experiments and sharing what we’re learning.”

In December, Bungie is promising the start of a more “alien and dynamic survival experience” with the arrival of its first dedicated PvE mode. It’ll arrive alongside a “refreshed Perimeter experience, a new social space with a firing range, a new Runner shell, an experimental PvP Team Deathmatch mode, and the first of several improvements to the new-player experience.”

Hopefully, the wait will be worth it. Peak daily Steam concurrent players for the game has continued to decline throughout the summer, and mass layoffs at Bungie earlier in the summer, which included some of the people working on Marathon, have left the shooters’ days feeling numbered. If the Symbiosis update can deliver, maybe it’ll just be the start of a completely different version of the game.