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We've Reached The Point Where Destiny 2 Has More Players Than Marathon on Steam

IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
www.thegamer.com

We've Reached The Point Where Destiny 2 Has More Players Than Marathon

Marathon released on March 5 on PC and consoles.
www.thegamer.com www.thegamer.com

It took a little over two months, but Destiny 2 has now outpaced Marathon in concurrent players. The live-service extraction shooter from Bungie, which was released on March 5, has fallen to its live-service counterpart, Destiny 2, a title that first debuted in September 2017.

Of note, these are strictly numbers collected via SteamDB, though, notably, in a beta widget for PlayStation 5, Marathon was not among the Top 10 highest-played games in the United States, nor was it in the list of "trending" titles in the States.

Right now, Destiny 2 has peaked at 10,744 players over its last 24 hours, with 4,519 players actively engaging with the title as of this writing. Meanwhile, Marathon peaked at 10,285 players over its last 24 hours, with 2,986 players actively online.

Notably, this is a major downturn for Marathon, a live-service title that experienced some turbulence ahead of its release and was indefinitely delayed at one point.

The title peaked at 88,337 players on its launch date, but in the weeks following, it slowly declined, dropping players by the thousands. Now to the point where Destiny 2 is seemingly more popular than Bungie's most recent title.

Of course, the overall numbers for Marathon could be strong, when counting consoles, potentially even stronger than Destiny 2. But for a title intended for a hardcore PC audience, it is rather disappointing.
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Do I not remember correctly that PC was the most-played platform for Marathon? If now the numbers on PC are lower than for D2, that doesn't bode well
 
It was bound to happen eventually. A game like Marathon, or any of those live service games for that matter, can only bleed players through time. We had two juggernauts release (Apex and Fortnite) back in the day and to me those are the games that people return to. All of these other games may release and look flashy, but they can't hold the attention of players for long. Plus, imagine all of the money and time spent in those earlier live service games.

Same thing happened to MMORPG's.
 
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Yeah but wait for the Marathon Defense Force to tell you this is perfectly in control and part of the plan.

With season 2 the game will peak at 150K obviously.
 
better game has more players

Funny Face Wow GIF by Tennis TV
 
Between this, Concord, and the absolute disasters that Hunters Gathering and Fairgame will probably be, I keep thinking about how bad Factions must have been to not even get a chance to see the light of day.

Investing in live service games and porting their few great single-player games to PC were some of the worst decisions Playstation ever made. They're lucky Xbox was dumb enough not to capitalize on that.
 
neo raider said:
I still don't understand why they choose the extraction shooter route
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Trend chasing, nothing more complicated than that, just more trend chasing.

This trend chasing is also largely responsible for the horrid state the industry is in right now, that and certain elements who have infiltrated the industry on every level.
 
neo raider said:
I still don't understand why they choose the extraction shooter route
The game has an amazing visual style but its not made for an extraction shooter
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Because Bungie only makes sci fi shooters since Halo 1.

They already have Destiny 2 as the fully featured shooter with SP and tons of traditional modes and PVP and PVE. So to distance Marathon from it, they made an extraction game with totally different art (which was actually plagiarized). But they arent the ones to ever make WWII, modern warfare, or grimy rusty settings (like Fallout or ARC). They make clean and bright spacey sci fi games.

They screwed up because extraction market is small, many people didnt like the art, and extraction games typically have little content. But the game loop itself might catch on like ARC, so mass success can be achieved but it's hard.
 
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I will absolutely enjoy posts shitting on marathon. Not because I dislike marathon (I don't. It's fine.), but because Bungie killed an actual successful game to make it.
 
neo raider said:
I still don't understand why they choose the extraction shooter route
The game has an amazing visual style but its not made for an extraction shooter
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I agree with earlier posts about this being discussed. Destiny required huge expansions and people would finish them in a matter of weeks. But PvP, once addicted, can have minimal changes and still be incredibly engaging and lucrative for the developer. Bungie glacier slow but perfect style (as per them lol) of development fits well for an multiplayer game.

A full on Destiny 2 DLC worth of content can be spaced out for months in a PvP focused game. Not to mention Destiny PvP addicts needs very little content to be engaged. Extraction shooter seemed like the perfect fit. But they made an un-fun game, too niche and had burned too many bridges to have any goodwill left.
 
Fbh said:
$3.6 billion for a couple of games which combined have fewer players on Steam than The Binding of Isaac

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Straight Face Trying Not To Laugh GIF
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To be fair, Marathon is on weekly 4 hr maintenance now.... which is actually another silly debacle since no other shooter I ever played did that.

Looking at CCU charts and about this time 10 am Marathon would have about 6,000 CCU. So combined with D2 that's 12.5k gamers.

These are the games right now that have about 12k-ish gamers which Bungie needs two games combined to match.

Brotato now has higher peaks and valleys than Marathon. It's daily stats are about 12k peaks and 5k valleys. Marathon is down to 10k peaks and 3k valleys. It also came out 3 years ago too.

l16pyZ1USSwOSViw.jpg
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
To be fair, Marathon is on weekly 4 hr maintenance now.... which is actually another silly debacle since no other shooter I ever played did that.

Looking at CCU charts and about this time 10 am Marathon would have about 6,000 CCU. So combined with D2 that's 12.5k gamers.

These are the games right now that have about 12k-ish gamers which Bungie needs two games combined to match.

Brotato now has higher peaks and valleys than Marathon. It's daily stats are about 12k peaks and 5k valleys. Marathon is down to 10k peaks and 3k valleys. It also came out 3 years ago too.

l16pyZ1USSwOSViw.jpg
Click to expand...

Is there atleast the silver lining of Marathon outselling its sales rival in that Femboy game? Dude, they were neck and neck on Steamdb on sales all last week.

Both of them going after that covetted "sweaty" demo.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
To be fair, Marathon is on weekly 4 hr maintenance now.... which is actually another silly debacle since no other shooter I ever played did that.

Looking at CCU charts and about this time 10 am Marathon would have about 6,000 CCU. So combined with D2 that's 12.5k gamers.

These are the games right now that have about 12k-ish gamers which Bungie needs two games combined to match.

Brotato now has higher peaks and valleys than Marathon. It's daily stats are about 12k peaks and 5k valleys. Marathon is down to 10k peaks and 3k valleys. It also came out 3 years ago too.

l16pyZ1USSwOSViw.jpg
Click to expand...

Yeah I assumed Marathon was in maintenance or something, but even if you compare the 24 hrs peak numbers they still bellow The Binding of Isaac peak numbers.
Though I think the biggest issues is that they aren't really making any money either.
Marathon is on spot 287 of the best sellers, Destiny 2 is at 171.

Here are some games that are currently making more money on Steam than Destiny 2 or Marathon:
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Fbh said:
Yeah I assumed Marathon was in maintenance or something, but even if you compare the 24 hrs peak numbers they still bellow The Binding of Isaac peak numbers.
Though I think the biggest issues is that they aren't really making any money either.
Marathon is on spot 287 of the best sellers, Destiny 2 is at 171.

Here are some games that are currently making more money on Steam than Destiny 2 or Marathon:
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header.jpg

header.jpg
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Binding of Isaac is in a totally different league. It's daily peak is 20-25k and late night low is still 11k. More than double Marathon does. Binding's late night low is almost 4x Marathon's 3k CCU.
 
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