The writing was on the walls.

Bungie officially delayed Marathon. Originally slated to release on September 23, 2025, Marathon now no longer has a release date. Bungie says that they won't have any sort of release date update until this fall. Mere days ago, Sony said that Marathon was still slated for a Fiscal Year 2025 release, meaning Marathon could be out by March 2026 at the latest. This is assuming plans don't change again.

Bungie says that they are delaying the game due to the "passionate feedback" after the Marathon reveal and Alpha playtest. They say that they have taken the public feedback to heart and they know they "need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion."

The studio says that they are going to continue closed testing. These will be done with some participants from the Alpha. The tests will include gameplay updates and the addition of new features as they are created by Bungie.

What isn't mentioned here is how several art assets have had to be changed or completely redone after Bungie was yet again caught stealing artwork.

Really, the whole situation doesn't bode well for either Bungie or parent company Sony. Marathon was already going to have a difficult time going up against another extraction shooter, Arc Raiders. Of the two, I've heard far more positive things about the Arc Raiders tests when compared to the recent Marathon tests. With this delay, Arc Raiders will now have a several month jumpstart on Marathon.

Sony is also taking another L here with their live-service push. We already know what happened with Concord. Reports on Fairgames (stylized as Fairgame$), an online heist shooter, have not been positive. Jade Raymond recently left as studio lead at Haven Studios, the development team that is making Fairgames. Reports shared about internal tests of Fairgames have also been quite negative. There is even some talk going around, mere rumors for now, that Fairgames may end up just being cancelled before it's ever released.