Marathon fell to just 670 concurrent Steam players, below Concord‘s 697 peak, days before Season 3 as new reporting directly addresses the game’s future.
Last week (on September 10), Marathon dropped to just 765 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamPeaks, putting Bungie’s extraction shooter only 68 players above Concord’s infamous 697-player all-time peak. The timing is rough. Season 3 is still set for September 22, with Bungie preparing a major Perimeter rework, a new Runner shell, and new weapons and equipment.
Season 3 will also add Marathon’s first full PvE mode, giving Bungie a new way to pull in players who may have bounced off the game’s PvP-heavy loop. With the Steam population sliding this close to launch, the update is arriving at a point where Marathon badly needs more than a short-lived spike.
Today, Marathon slipped below Concord’s all-time Steam peak.
Marathon falls to 670 Steam players before Season 3
SteamPeaks’ minute-by-minute 48-hour chart recorded Marathon at just 670 concurrent players during non-peak hours earlier today. Sony’s biggest live service flop, Concord’s all-time high Steam record sits at 697 concurrent players, so Marathon current sits 27 players below the highest count Concord ever reached on Steam.
The 27-player gap puts Marathon roughly 3.9% below Concord’s lifetime peak. SteamPeaks’ same view showed Marathon reaching 2,471 players over the previous 24 hours, so 670 was the low point of the daily cycle rather than the game sitting below Concord all day.
The comparison needs that context. Concord’s 697 was its ceiling. Marathon’s 670 is an off-peak low months after a much larger launch, and putting those figures side by side does not mean Marathon launched with a smaller Steam audience than Concord did.
The useful comparison is retention. Bungie now has a multiplayer shooter dropping below Concord’s 697-player peak during its quietest hours just eight days before its next major season.
Season 3 is the next big test. Bungie says the September 22 update will make “big changes to the early game experience” and expand Perimeter with major new areas and encounters. There has already been a big leak revealing what’s supposedly coming with Season 3 of Marathon, which you can check out in our report here.
Marathon is not shutting down, insider claims
The latest update on Marathon’s future is more reassuring. Amid the growing concern around Season 3, Forbes contrubutor and well-known Bungie insider, Paul Tassi, pushed back on the shutdown talk last week on September 10.
Posting on X, Tassi said “Marathon is not shutting down” and “Bungie is not shutting down,” adding that more information was still to come.
Bungie has yet to fully reveal what’s coming in Marathon Season 3, though that should change later this week with the new season set to launch next week.
Do you think Marathon Season 3 will pull things around for the game and Bungie? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
