Former Marathon director says he pushed for a new name for Marathon’s genre, calling the “extraction shooter” label “so dumb” and saying it’s the only genre named after a mechanic.
Bungie’s upcoming sci-fi shooter Marathon isn’t out yet, but it’s definitely one of the most talked-about projects in the extraction shooter space right now, a genre that’s quickly gaining traction thanks to hits like Escape from Tarkov, and most recently, Arc Raiders from Embark Studios.
Arc Raiders has shattered expectations with a peak of 462,488 concurrent players on Steam, setting a new all-time high record a week after the game’s launch, which is quite rare. It’s good news for the extraction shooters genre and signals a strong interest in the genre.
But not everyone in the industry is a fan of how the genre is labeled. In fact, a former Bungie developer who worked directly on Marathon has shared his own frustration with the term “extraction shooter,” saying the label doesn’t really describe what these games are about.
Former Bungie product director says “extraction shooter” is a bad name for the genre
Speaking on the Shooter Monthly podcast, Chris Sides, who served as Director of Product Management on Marathon between June 2020 and July 2024, said that he and Bungie’s marketing team pushed hard to come up with a different name for the genre entirely.
Talking about Helldivers 2 and the extraction shooter genre, Sides said: “The problem is, Helldivers 2 can be called an extraction shooter, but it’s not. The genre name is so bad. I hate the genre name of extraction shooter. When I was working on Marathon, I was working with marketing, dying to be like, ‘Can we please create a different genre name,’ because extraction shooter is so dumb. It’s the only genre where its name is a mechanic.”
Sides went on to explain that he believes the genre itself is still figuring out what it wants to be, saying: “So, you call Helldivers 2, is that an extraction shooter because you extract? No, it’s not like Tarkov at all. So, the terminology of the genre is already terrible; it really makes it hard to compare these games.”
“It’s why Arena Breakout and Tarkov, you can kind of look at those because they’re both extraction shooters and they kind of fit the same mold.
“Comparing Arc Raiders to Tarkov just doesn’t really fit. Comparing Arc Raiders to maybe like Rust could fit, and then, Rust, is that an extraction? Because it’s survival.
“It’s just… it’s a problem. I cannot stand the name of it. So I think that when you say the extraction genre, it should hit your spot. I think it’s really the fact that the genre doesn’t even know what it is. You, as a player, how do you know what you’re going to get? And I think that’s one of the real issues with the genre itself.”
Sides also mentioned that while at Bungie, the team actively studied competing titles, including Embark’s Arc Raiders, saying: “Working on Marathon, we were looking at this game like years ago, and it’s gotten so much better.”
Despite his criticism, Bungie continues to describe Marathon as a “team-based extraction shooter”, centered on teams of Runners exploring the abandoned colony on Tau Ceti IV. The game recently wrapped up its Closed Technical Test, which ran in late October 2025, with Bungie expected to share an official update or dev blog in the coming weeks or months.
The Game Post published several reports going over the changes that have been made to the game since the Closed Alpha test in April, including new Runners, the endgame Marathon ship map and how it works, the Codex system, and more.
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