Marathon Player Count Has Fallen 96% Since Launch, Leaving Bungie With a Make-or-Break Season 3

Marathon player count has fallen more than 96% from its Steam peak, and Season 3 could decide its future.

Marathon launched on March 5, 2026, and hit a record 88,337 concurrent peak players on Steam. Five months on, its 24-hour peak is just 3,507. That puts Marathon more than 96% below its launch record on Steam, a drop severe enough that Season 3 now looks less like another content update and more like a test of whether Bungie can rebuild a dwindling playerbase.

The awkward part for Bungie is that Marathon did get people through the door. An analyst firm, Alinea Analytics, estimated 1.2 million copies sold across Steam, PS5, and Xbox by March 24, with Steam accounting for about 800,000. Forbes’ Paul Tassi later reported that those estimates were close to the real figures.

Alinea updated its estimate in late May to almost 1.5 million sold, with 68% on Steam. This isn’t about nobody buying the game. It’s about buyers leaving.

The latest player data puts a much harder number on that retention problem.

Marathon Player Count Has Fallen More Than 96% From Its Steam Peak

SteamDB recorded an average of 38,290 concurrent players in March. That average fell to 15,863 in April, then 8,248 in May. Season 2 briefly moved things in the other direction, with June averaging 11,455 players and reaching a 40,686 monthly peak during a month that included Marathon’s free Open Play Week.

The recovery didn’t hold. July’s average fell 58.5% to 4,755. Now, per Steam DB, the game hit a 24-hour peak of 3,507, falling from the peak of 88,337, the all-time record. Put another way, Marathon’s current daily high is less than 4% of the number it once had playing simultaneously on Steam.

Outside peak hours, things look even rougher. Marathon has recently been hovering around 1,500 concurrent players on Steam during non-peak hours, with a low of just 1,125 yesterday. That appears to be one of the game’s lowest concurrent player counts since launch. Below are Marathon’s monthly Steam peaks:

• March 2026: 88,337
• April 2026: 36,374
• May 2026: 17,131
• June 2026: 40,686
• July 2026: 14,809

Bungie has already identified several reasons retention has been difficult. In a May development update, former game director Joe Ziegler said the team wanted to make Marathon “less grindy, more rewarding,” while also addressing matchmaking, UI and UX, the endgame, solo and duo play, and onboarding.

On the Marathon subreddit, the player retention threads have focused on the same pressure points, especially the punishing new-player experience and a progression loop that can leave experienced players with little reason to return after finishing seasonal goals.

Marathon Season 3 Now Carries Bigger Stakes for Bungie

Season 3 starts September 22, and Bungie has considerably more planned than another Runner shell and weapon drop. Perimeter is getting new areas and encounters, the early-game experience and onboarding are being reworked, and new weapons and equipment are coming.

More importantly, though, Bungie has confirmed that a full PvE mode is arriving during Season 3, with July’s Vault Breaker experiment being used to collect feedback and data for it. Bungie hasn’t said whether that mode launches on September 22 or later in the season, but it gives Season 3 another major job: proving Marathon can hold players who aren’t interested in living inside its PvP extraction loop.

Bungie now has a game that appears to have sold close to 1.5 million copies, yet Steam’s daily peak has fallen by more than 96% from launch. Season 3 doesn’t need to recreate March for one weekend. It needs to give enough of those missing players a reason to still be there in October.

Would Season 3’s Perimeter rework and onboarding changes be enough to bring you back to Marathon? Let us know in the comments.