Bungie’s Marathon has been the target of online hate campaigns for a while now, but especially so following the announcement that Destiny 2 is ending. Since Bungie’s announcement, the brilliant game-of-the-year-worthy extraction shooter has been hit with review bomb campaigns and even more online hate directed towards fans and developers.
Elias Toufexis, Marathon’s audio director and the voice of the game’s Assassin shell, explained that they’ve seen waves and waves of hate for the game. As an active social media user, the Deus Ex actor has seen countless hate posts for the game, despite its strong critical reception.
“I saw some guy like, I don’t want to get into specifics, but they’re just like, ‘I hope Bungie fails because of the woke leftist ideology.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m working with four white guys and two white women. I don’t understand this. Where are you getting this?’” the actor told PC Gamer.
While the actor “welcomes’ critique, Marathon’s hate campaign from players has not involved any constructive criticism. “Critique the game? Critique my work? Totally acceptable,” he said. “But there’s people that go on Twitter and post memes: ‘This is Concord 2, this is Concord 2.’ Why are you spending hours doing this … How do you hope something fails?”
The current campaign that comes after the Destiny 2 news is even more confusing. “I understand Bungie made a game, Destiny 2, that people loved, and then they kind of were like, ‘We’re gonna put that on hold and we’re gonna work on Marathon.’ People got upset about that,” he said. “Cool, don’t play Marathon. That’s fine, speak with your wallet, that’s fine.”
Marathon is far from the only franchise that Toufexis has worked on that has seen similar hate campaigns, but the actor believes that “people just want to hate” nowadays. The actor says “it’s sad more than anything”, adding that “life is so short, man. Just stop tweeting memes under things for six hours.”
Bungie’s Marathon may not have sold many copies compared to most AAA releases, but the multiplayer game is beloved by its small but dedicated playerbase. While the game is currently already great, Bungie has confirmed that it will be supporting the extraction shooter for a number of years.
At the time of publication, Bungie has plans to evolve the live-service extraction shooter “beyond 2026 and into 2027”. Bungie has confirmed that there will be more PvE options within future updates as well as continuing to explore the “alien elements” of the game’s brilliant sci-fi universe.
Unfortunately, Bungie’s work on Destiny is seemingly done. Following Destiny 2’s final update later this year, the studio will keep the game active, but it will not receive any additional content. The studio reportedly isn’t working on Destiny 3or the rumoured Destiny 2 Classic, either. Instead, the studio is said to be planning layoffs.
