Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon has shed more than half of its Steam audience in a single day, dropping from a 76K concurrent peak to roughly 33K, after previously hitting a 143K all-time high during the Server Slam.

Marathon’s open beta weekend is currently live across platforms with only a few days left until launch, and the game even briefly pushed into Steam’s top 10 best-sellers. The problem is retention: the initial surge is fading fast.

Based on SteamDB tracking, the title is now sitting around 33K concurrent players on Steam, a drop of more than 50% compared to the 76K it reached the day before. Just three days earlier, the Server Slam period delivered an all-time peak of 143K concurrent users, but the decline has continued since that first rush.

This isn’t a one-off dip, either. The second day alone saw roughly a 47.5% fall, and the slope has stayed negative. On top of that, Marathon hasn’t come close to the near-190K concurrent peak posted by Arc Raiders during its own open beta.

One likely factor is incentive: progress earned during the Server Slam reportedly won’t carry over into the full release, which can sap motivation to keep grinding the test build. Reviews also haven’t collapsed to the level many expected, but criticism is still pointed – especially at the UI, which players describe as inconsistent, intrusive, and difficult to read in action.

With launch set for March 5, the immediate question is whether Bungie can reverse the curve at release, or whether these early Steam numbers are a warning sign for a live-service shooter that needs momentum to survive.

Source: Tech4Gamers