Bungie Now Has More Devs on Marathon Than Destiny 2
▼ Summary
– Bungie now has more employees working on Marathon than on Destiny 2, with the split roughly even and Marathon holding a slight edge.
– Previously, about 550 of 850 Bungie employees worked on Destiny 2, but resources have shifted to Marathon as the primary priority.
– Destiny 2’s PvE content has dried up for months, with no significant update for another six weeks and a smaller expansion still months away.
– Marathon launched with four maps and six classes, while Destiny 2’s content output has dropped to less than 40% of its peak.
– The future of both games is uncertain, as Destiny 2’s new content model struggles and Marathon faces player retention issues.
Bungie’s internal priorities have shifted dramatically. While Destiny 2 has long been the studio’s flagship live service title, the balance of development power has tipped. According to sources at Bungie, Marathon, the extraction shooter that launched just a month ago, now has more developers assigned to it than the fading MMO that built the company’s reputation.
Of the roughly 800 remaining employees, the split is now nearly even , and Marathon holds a slight edge. This marks a significant change from earlier reports. Back when Joe Ziegler and Jason Schreier detailed the post-layoff landscape, about 300 of Bungie’s 850 staff were focused on Marathon, while 550 , the clear majority , remained on Destiny 2. Now, those numbers have converged. The studio is clearly prioritizing momentum for its new release, especially as Sony watches closely to see if it can break PlayStation’s recent streak of live service struggles.
The contrast between the two games is stark. Marathon currently offers four maps and six classes. Meanwhile, Destiny 2 has long relied on a steady flow of PvE content and, at least historically, PvP updates. But that PvP pipeline dried up well before this shift, as many of those developers moved to Marathon long ago. Despite its smaller scope, building and sustaining Marathon may be more complex than it appears from the outside. Still, compared to the massive content machine that was Destiny 2 at its peak, the difference in scale is enormous.
Destiny 2’s PvE content has been sparse for months. There’s still a month and a half before the midseason update brings anything substantial, and after that, another three months before one of the game’s smaller expansions arrives. That is, assuming that expansion still exists. Bungie has been almost silent about Destiny 2’s long-term roadmap, leaving players to wonder what the future holds.
The news that resources are shifting toward Marathon is hardly a shock, but this is the first confirmation of the change since the last round of reporting. The question now is whether more developers will follow, or if, once Marathon stabilizes, Bungie might swing back toward reviving Destiny 2. But the idea that roughly 400 people can sustain a game that once commanded nearly the entirety of Bungie’s 1,000-plus workforce feels optimistic. It seems clear that players are getting far less than 40% of the content they received during Destiny’s peak.
Neither game’s future is settled. Destiny 2 was supposed to thrive under a new model of smaller expansions and midseason updates, but even in its first year, that plan is running into serious trouble. Marathon will continue to receive balance patches and seasonal content , new maps, runners, and microtransactions , but with player numbers dropping rapidly, the studio may need to make significant changes to attract a broader audience. Everything feels precarious right now. The next few months will determine whether either title can find solid footing.
(Source: Forbes)
