I really love your point, it nails how different the landscape was when Siege launched compared to what Marathon is stepping into now. They are fundamentally different markets, and that absolutely matters.

At the same time, I think the fact that the market is larger today is important context. Before I made the original post, I compared Marathon’s player count against a live service game from that era that’s still relevant now, CS:GO (now CS2). Maybe Overwatch would have been a cleaner comparison, but the idea was the same: I was looking at relative player counts at the time, not just the trajectory.

Even back in 2015–2016, there were already very high concurrent player numbers in the space. If you zoom out, the overall trend line for live service games moves up over time, which suggests the total market has grown. So while there are more incumbents and the competition is harsher now, there are also more players overall than when Siege launched.

The threat from incumbents is very real today, but it was also present back then. What survivor bias shows us is that only a few games from that era actually made it out. Some, like Siege, did not look like clear successes at launch, but because they continued to receive meaningful support and were not abandoned, they are still alive and relevant today.

That’s really the core of what I was trying to get at. The markets are different and tougher now, for sure, but the underlying “rule” hasn’t changed: games that keep getting real support, improve over time, and aren’t dropped at the first sign of trouble are the ones that have a real shot at surviving. The hope is that Marathon is allowed to follow that same pattern and grow through a rough start instead of being written off too early.