One former Bungie employee says working at the studio on the upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, was “extremely toxic and frustrating.”
Over on Bluesky, one former employee known as Spirited, a former engineer working on Marathon, posted on the social platform stating “Working with engineering / Marathon leadership was extremely toxic and humiliating,” he wrote. “I won’t speak about the rest, but Bungie leadership needs to be gutted completely.”
All of this follows in the wake of the stolen artwork used in the game. Last week, Bungie hosted a livestream in regard to artwork plagiarism within Marathon. Needless to say, the comments were full, and once again not looking well for the studio and Marathon’s art director, Joseph Cross, seen below.
To make matters worse, a new report claims that Bungie’s Marathon needs to break into the top 5 of NPD (now known as Circana), sales this year to be considered a success. This comes in Paul Tassi’s latest video, where he also goes on to say that he feels that Marathon will not have a chance to be “successful” as it’s only a matter of time before it fails.
There certainly is a lot of doom and gloom around Marathon, which is currently scheduled for release on September 23rd. After the latest stream with Joseph Cross, there appears to be a lot of work to be done that will likely see the game pushed to 2026 at some point. Art assets need to be addressed, and fan feedback on the gameplay should be reconsidered. Right now, Bungie is not in a great place with the studio and Marathon.
Let us know what you think of the current state of Marathon in the comments below.
