While the internet continues to obsess over the player numbers of Bungie’s Marathon, a new report claims that the iconic FPS studio has more employees working on the new extraction shooter than any other project.
Alongside continued Marathon development, Bungie is also continuing to create additional content for Destiny 2 with new expansions and live-service content in the works. Additionally, the studio is reportedly in the very early stages of Destiny 3 and a WoW-style Destiny 2 Classic, although reports on that project are tenuous at best.
In a report by Forbes, it’s reported that Bungie has increased the number of developers working on Marathon as Destiny 2 continues to fizzle out. According to the report, Destiny 2 originally “had a fairly significant edge in devs working on the game”, but that has shifted with the Marathon team now consisting of more than half of Bungie’s overall headcount.
Forbes reports that “Marathon [is] now edging out Destiny 2 by a bit”, although both games share the logistics support team within the studio. Despite this, it’s worth mentioning that Destiny 2 still has hundreds of developers working on the game’s future, even as Marathon has taken the spotlight within the company.
This news comes after Bungie confirmed that it is investing in Marathon “for the long haul” with “years” of additional content in the works for the extraction shooter. At the time of writing, Marathon already has multiple future seasons in some form of development with the upcoming Season 2—which will release in June—already feature complete within Bungie.
Marathon Season 2 will introduce the game’s first new Runner Shell, Sentinel, as well s the new Cradle system which will give players more autonomy over their stats. Additionally, the update comes with a nighttime variant of Dire Marsh, which may make thermal scopes even more overpowered, as well as a new gun, mods, cores, contracts, and enemies to fight.
Additionally, Bungie is also, obviously, in development on Marathon Season 3, which will launch in August alongside a seasonal wipe. Bungie has not released any information on this season so far, but it is expected to come with a major story moment for the extraction shooter.
Alongside seasonal updates, Marathon has also increased the number of developers working on traditional patches, taking some of the expertise of the Destiny 2 team for weapon balancing. Marathon has already released rapid patches with game-altering new features—such as the arrival of Mercy Kits earlier this month—and this frantic pace of improvements will continue for the foreseeable future.
