It’s been a rough year for the folks over at Bungie, as two rounds of mass layoffs have left the studio so hollow that development on currently announced titles has shifted quite a bit. The studio has had to shelve interesting projects, unannounced titles have been shelved and moved to other PlayStation studios, and the future of Destiny 2 is looking pretty shaky despite the critical success of The Final Shape.

Everything is uncertain at the moment, including Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter that was originally announced for 2023. We still don’t know too much about the title, which isn’t surprising given the current turmoil at Bungie, but it was expected to launch sometime in 2025. According to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, that date now seems pretty uncertain.

A new video from SkillUp claims that sentiment around Marathon at Bungie is “not great” at the moment, as Schreier claims that there are many developers at the studio who are “pessimistic” about the title meeting its planned deadline. Of course, we don’t know exactly what Bungie’s current deadline is, but it could be problematic if it’s towards the end of next year.

“There’s a reason it was scheduled for this year and got pushed back a whole year, and people I’ve talked to are a little pessimistic about it meeting the current scheduled deadline, but we’ll see,” Schreier said. “I don’t know exactly when that is, sometime in 2025, I’m not sure. Yeah, I mean, the sentiment I’ve heard about it hasn’t been great, at least a few months ago.”

Bungie doesn’t seem excited about Marathon

Schreier is then asked if he’s spoken to anyone at Bungie who’s excited to be working on Marathon, and that doesn’t seem to be the case. He also brings up the fact that the team behind Marathon has undergone quite a bit of leadership shake-up, with several high-profile departments being eliminated since the game was announced, so it’s difficult to gauge Bungie’s general feeling about Marathon at this point.

Either way, it’s not a good sign for a game that doesn’t seem to have much enthusiasm built up around it overall. It’s a significant departure from what Bungie’s core audience is used to, so it’s a game that already has an uphill battle ahead of it. Add to that the recent struggles of Concord , another first-party PlayStation shooter that’s likely failing to pull in the audience it needs ahead of its launch later this month, and Marathon’s prospects aren’t looking good.

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