Marathon’s server slam opens to massive player counts, and the race has only just begun

Marathon, Bungie's turbulent take on the extraction shooter genre, has just started its server slam beta. And, to my genuine surprise, it has attracted over 140,000 concurrent players within the first hour or so of the beta's release, with the Steam chart set to keep rising as the day progresses. According to SteamDB, Marathon's server slam is seeing about 142,028 concurrent players at the time of writing, with the beta opening about an hour before this article's release. And this is just the PC side of things, where we have easily verifiable charts to leer at compared to consoles, which no doubt have just as many players hopping into the game to try it out. Image via Bungie So many folks are trying to get in that a server queue has appeared, and even Steam itself started glitching out and throwing up error after error for those trying to install the game. We haven't seen site-crashing activity like this for a while. The last time it happened was Silksong's release day, and while that level of catastrophe is yet to be replicated, Marathon is on the path to becoming one of Steam's most-played games before it even releases. This has to count as a major victory for Bungie, who hasn't had the best experience developing Marathon into what it is today. After changing several directors, suffering from major internal woes, and sowing doubt among players, Marathon seems to have emerged like a phoenix out of the ashes, captivating a huge crowd as soon as it became available. We'll have to wait and see how players will like it in the long run and how many of them will remain in the wake of ARC Raiders' strong position in the extraction shooter genre, but these initial numbers do look mighty impressive. And I hope they keep climbing up. The post Marathon’s server slam opens to massive player counts, and the race has only just begun appeared first on Destructoid.

Feb 27, 2026 - 04:09

Marathon’s server slam opens to massive player counts, and the race has only just begun

Marathon, Bungie's turbulent take on the extraction shooter genre, has just started its server slam beta. And, to my genuine surprise, it has attracted over 140,000 concurrent players within the first hour or so of the beta's release, with the Steam chart set to keep rising as the day progresses.

According to SteamDB, Marathon's server slam is seeing about 142,028 concurrent players at the time of writing, with the beta opening about an hour before this article's release. And this is just the PC side of things, where we have easily verifiable charts to leer at compared to consoles, which no doubt have just as many players hopping into the game to try it out.

Image via Bungie So many folks are trying to get in that a server queue has appeared, and even Steam itself started glitching out and throwing up error after error for those trying to install the game. We haven't seen site-crashing activity like this for a while. The last time it happened was Silksong's release day, and while that level of catastrophe is yet to be replicated, Marathon is on the path to becoming one of Steam's most-played games before it even releases.

This has to count as a major victory for Bungie, who hasn't had the best experience developing Marathon into what it is today. After changing several directors, suffering from major internal woes, and sowing doubt among players, Marathon seems to have emerged like a phoenix out of the ashes, captivating a huge crowd as soon as it became available.

We'll have to wait and see how players will like it in the long run and how many of them will remain in the wake of ARC Raiders' strong position in the extraction shooter genre, but these initial numbers do look mighty impressive.

And I hope they keep climbing up.

The post Marathon’s server slam opens to massive player counts, and the race has only just begun appeared first on Destructoid.

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