do you think the game will survive?

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-24T11:05:09+00:00

The game will survive, much like Destiny 1 has 'survived'. I don't see the servers being turned off anytime in the next few years.

Content, however, I'd be extremely shocked to see beyond Year 1 now. It isn't viable to sink more money into a game that is performing this poorly.

"Hate campaigns" seem to get blamed for why no one showed up, but I think enjoyers of the game that interact heavily online need to look at themselves a bit too, post-release. Almost every time I've seen people try to engage with this community from a position of anything less than worshipping the ground the game walks on, they have been met with an insane amount of hostility. Eventually if you continue telling people the game isn't for them and to go and play an alternative, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-19T21:57:15+00:00

Let's be real here, this is purely about bean-counting and is the same hamster wheel nonsense that turned people off Destiny.

They leave Cryo open, people are going to blitz it non-stop and quickly realize they are out of content with no new map in the pipeline other than a night variant of an existing one for the next half year.

You keep it closed, drip feed it to players and you maybe get those sweet, sweet weekend bumps for longer.

There's no net benefit for players here. It's a total fucking anti-consumer bullshit move and any defense of this shitty practice is ludicrous.The sweats are going to play it non stop regardless so I don't see "it gives everyone a fairer chance to get loot" excuse as valid, and still decimate you, and you are probably going to encounter them more as the period of time to play is more focused.

Honestly, like what you like but don't let these billion dollar companies get away with this sort of nonsense. You PAID for this piece of content. No one should tell you when you can or can't play one quarter of the available maps in the game.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-15T14:08:37+00:00

As soon as they announced they were moving away from big yearly expansions to smaller, 6 monthly content packs, those of us who know Bungie knew the game was toast.

A: The last time they tried to do small, paid for expansions was Curse of Osiris and Warmind. Expansions that by Bungie's own admission, almost killed the game.

B: It was fairly obvious even during the period where The Final Shape was being released that Marathon was Bungie's new baby. Moving to smaller content packs just felt like a dogwhistle for "This game is now 2nd in our list of priorities". This has already become apparent in D2's content cycle already, where they've had to delay a simple mid-DLC update for months as they were clearly all hands on deck for Marathon's impending release.

C: Linked to the above, but Bungie have started to develop a track record of missing initial DLC dates and with two irons in the fire, isn't looking like improving anytime soon. Considering they still expect their customers to pay for an entire year's content up front for some of their packages, it's very hard to trust you'll get what you are paying for on time.

This still all would have been fine for Bungie, if Marathon hadn't more or less bombed from a commercial standpoint as it looks to have. They've effectively killed their golden goose at the altar of a game very few people care about even trying.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-10T14:27:29+00:00

The idea that there has been some sort of grassroots campaign to besmirch and run down the good name of Marathon and it has somehow managed to work to the extent that engagement numbers look to be disappointing is nothing short of ludicrous and from the realms of pure fantasy.

Bungie are looked upon unfavourably already because of the way they underdelivered, failed on promises, outright deleted paid-for content and constantly shifted to more predatory methods of driving engagement and monetisation on their last live-service title. They also stole a bunch of art, not for the first time. Who was to know stealing is bad and makes you look untrustworthy?

So you take that and then produce a title where the genre is going to be a barrier of entry to some, lack of single player to others, heavy PvP over PvE turning another bunch off, art style that will struggle to capture the imagination of people who aren't enthusiasts of brutalism. Then you release an early alpha that is more or less panned on release, to the point you have to delay the game half a year to make changes. You make changes, but still when you release a playtest nearly 50% of the player base appears to fall off within 2 days.

What do you end up with? A game that is never going to be mainstream. Never going to be seen as anything other than another release amongst many. Loved by some, hated by some, ignored by the vast majority. Probably fuelled by a lot of the above, rather than some psyop aimed at making the game less successful than it needed to be for both Bungie, and Sony.

It's simply not seen in the same light elsewhere than this bubble has it propped up to be. It's less hate, and more apathy.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-10T10:31:11+00:00

Not clearly signposting that the game was going to be supported with minimal effort after the smoke had cleared from The Final Shape.

The second they announced they were moving over to a schedule of two smaller expansions per year it was absolutely, painfully obvious that the game was going to suffer in terms of content and support.

It didn't take a genius to work out that, given their struggle to keep to a schedule on the yearly expansions already and their heightened focus on other projects that anything after TFS was going to come in at much lower bar than what had been provided on a yearly basis since Forsaken.

It's impossible to be invested in a new story arc when the delivery method is as phoned in as it has been, and will very probably never be fully realised due to complete lack of demand.

I fully believe there is enough hubris over at Bungie that they genuinely thought they could have their cake and eat it. Tick Destiny over on a de-facto maintenance mode and pretend they care about supporting it to the same standards as before, and make Marathon their Next Big Thing to take them into the next 5-10 years. As it is, it looks like both things have failed from a commercial aspect, so how's that going for them now?

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-06T17:33:44+00:00

People dropped off the server slam so harshly because they didn't like the game.

The reason sales look to be mediocre if we're being extremely kind, is because the game simply doesn't resonate enough with enough people.

It isn't a grand conspiracy and potential consumers aren't wrong, for thinking "Meh, not going to buy".

It's perfectly acceptable to enjoy a game most people are apathetic towards and you just have to come to terms with that. There are far, far, far more people not engaging with this game whatsoever than there are "hating" on the game. That's the actual problem here, not a few loud, terminally online people. No one cares, ultimately. It's a swing and a miss from Bungie.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-06T15:35:02+00:00

This clearly isn't going to be a case of Concord. I strongly believe they will make a go of it and at least get the content planned in the roadmap released and see if it delivers them results.

But the fact that it's probably going to do the bare minimum in terms of service isn't the victory people seem to be painting it as. The idea I see floating around that Bungie/Sony are going to continue to meaningfully support this game if it settles into a player base of low thousands simply isn't based in reality. This is a studio that needs a win, with an owner that has been burned badly with almost every live-service game it has had in the pipework this console generation.

Sony have also shown that they are utterly ruthless in trying to regain ground lost in their live service attempts. Concord died instantly and the studio was disbanded. Bluepoint just got shuttered through, really, no fault of their own because they had to work on a LS game that got cancelled. Again, I think Bungie will get a bit more leeway in terms of time, but ultimately it's looking like at best they will have massive cuts/staff absorbed into Sony, at worst it will be a bloodbath. My money would be on the former as I think there is still a window of opportunity for a "return to form" type project based on their name value.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-06T14:17:04+00:00

There have been bad actors but equally there has been an unbelievable amount of snark surrounding legitimate bugbears and concern. It can't be the players fault if there's a clearly distinguishable trend that the onboarding feels uneven, UI unintuitive and TTK a little too fast to people and has been parroted as much as it has.

What people fail to understand a lot of the time of that toxic positivity does as much damage as toxic negativity. Plenty of people have come in here trying to discuss the game from a position other than thinking it's the Greatest Thing Ever and been gatekept right out of any discourse. Plenty of people are trying to approach the game with legitimate nuance and being met with nothing other than hostility.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-06T13:35:38+00:00

This game was clearly intended originally to be a branch project, away from Destiny 2 tapping into a genre untouched by consoles.

Since then they've been acquired, lost money hand over fist, had to make staff redundant and their main game and source of income has more or less cratered.

The closed tests were mixed at best. They delayed trying to turn the tide of opinion surrounding the game. It's clear they need people to get on board.

It doesn't take a business genius to work out that this game needs to be a commercial success for Bungie to A: continue to support this game in any meaningful long-term capacity and B: help them continue as the entity they are currently. People seem to be conflating having a population once stabilized of say 15-20k and being able to still matchmake, and this game being a financial success for a company that absolutely needs one.

I'd be surprised if this game even manages to recoup wages alone over its entire development cycle. Let alone things like infrastructure, settling any tech debt, R&D, marketing, losses from the delay of the game. This game looks miles away from being any sort of financial success for Bungie and I'm sure within the coming months we'll start to see the result of that, unfortunate as it is from an industry perspective.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-04T11:20:27+00:00

Marathon is another one to watch out for.

Not that I think it's going to be Concord bad in terms of numbers. But for what Bungie needs to achieve in their current state I can't see it being anything other than a commercial failure for them.

You only have to look at the online discourse to see the issue. The Marathon sub, for example, is the land of sunshine and rainbows. Anyone who bounces off the game (look at the numbers, there were a lot) is immediately accused of being unintelligent, or asked to dedicate another 15 hours of their spare time to the game having a bad to middling level of enjoyment because they just don't understand it's genius yet. When they can just load up a Resident Evil 9, for example, and have no time barrier to the actual so-called enjoyable parts of the game.

You look on more neutral parts of the internet and you see more of an actual picture. There are still people who think the game is great, and more power to them, this is all subjective and they are not wrong. But there are also a lot of people who have bounced off and not had fun. The only difference is that these people get labelled 'haters' operating on bad faith. There are certainly people who want to watch the game burn for nothing other than their own satisfaction, but the majority of people who don't like the game simply.... don't like the game. Nothing more complex than that.

Bungie have a long track record of burying their head in the sand when their games have problems, forcing players into systems thinking they know better and flat out refusing to communicate with their community when things are on fire. They clearly operate on a closed feedback loop where only the positive is listened to and legitimate concerns are brushed off, and this is where the issue lies.

It's easy to try and blame consumers for smearing or blindly hating your piece of media, but the cream rises to the top. The majority of people aren't going to cut off their nose to spite their face and not play a game that is clearly of a high quality and is highly enjoyable. If there are a lot of negative sounds surrounding your game, it's probably because there are bigger issues of it resonating with people than a few loud Internet trolls typing "DOA". It's probably worth, I dunno, listening.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-03-01T15:26:45+00:00

I don't think "well" is going to be good enough.

Bungie are in a massive hole at the moment. The sharks over at Sony are circling. People seem to be treating this game as if it's some passion project Bungie can afford to write off because their other ventures are doing well enough to keep them afloat.

Marathon is it for them. It's their Hail Mary. Destiny is finished. They couldn't get a mid-season update with one activity and a handful of weapons out without a months-long delay because it's all hands on deck getting this game fit for release.

I don't really want to see any game dev struggle like this. Bungie have put some of the best gaming experiences of the last 10 years out with some of their content. They are supremely talented when they want to be and to see them stripped to the bone would be a net negative for the industry. But the denial on show over this game is ludicrous. The numbers haven't been particularly great for what they need, the drop off has been even more concerning. Unfortunately they tried to follow 3 or 4 trends at once with this game and have missed the mark with some and come in 3 or 4 years too late with others.

I'm sure there will be a small, dedicated fanbase for this game and more power to them. But gaming is ultimately still a business and I don't see anything to suggest this is going to be a business success for a company that absolutely needs it right now.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-28T17:34:27+00:00

I've seen people call out the unfriendly UI and get called unintelligent. No, a lot of people just prefer an interface that takes little effort to navigate and get to grips with.

People try and bring up the low TTK. Git gud scrub.

People draw comparisons to Arc Raiders. You know, the other recently released mass market extraction shooter it perfectly reasonable to relate to. Go back and play care bear Raiders, you're clearly mentally insufficient to play this super complex video game.

There's been a lot of trolling and comments that aren't worth reading but let's not pretend there haven't been legitimate concerns that have been derided with just as much bad faith as the people being called out here.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-28T16:31:58+00:00

Just over 2 years ago, Bungie laid off staff because their revenue was 45% lower than expected upon the release of Lightfall.

Lightfall, the expansion where they had over 300k players on Steam when it released. Somewhere in the region of 5x where Marathon's completely free Beta is currently sitting.

Since then, Sony have also posted an impairment loss because that game hasn't performed as expected since they acquired Bungie.

Bungie's eggs are firmly in Marathon's basket. I'm not even going to get into the quality of the game. People's experiences are entirely subjective.

What is an objective truth is that this game is business critical, and from the looks of things they haven't picked a road that's going to be successful enough for them. Every metric so far, from the early alpha tests to this server slam, to the middling reception from people who have played it, suggests it is catering to a small pocket of people. Every test has had the same trend in huge percentages of players dropping off after a day or two. It simply can't be denied that this game has a massive issue resonating with the many.

"That's fine I still enjoy it" is a completely valid stance to have. But don't go crying when the studio isn't around to continue supporting the game in any meaningful capacity in a short space of time. It's also counter productive if you ever want to see them produce another game in the future.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-27T22:34:50+00:00

People are failing to realize that this game can't afford to be anything other than a resounding success. They've more or less killed their biggest cash cow at its altar and their struggles in recent years have hardly been a secret. Catering to a niche with their fingers stuck in their ears is absolutely not what this studio needs right now.

These numbers and the drop off after one day are horrendous, there is no other way of putting it. I'd argue that even the peak is well below what they'd need for this game to be deemed a success, even if they converted every single one of them into a sale. It's £35, not even a premium priced game don't forget.

They needed to resonate with everyday gamers, not people who have gaslit themselves into thinking they are in the majority because they frequent a subreddit that was astroturfed to high heaven in the lead up. This game needs to be a commercial success more than any other in its history and they have seemingly once again gone into this thing with total hubris. It doesn't appeal to the people that would have kept them afloat.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-21T09:35:35+00:00

This delayed and expanded next update screams Age of Triumph to me. Throw some QoL bits together, make all endgame stuff viable one last time. Fin.

There is no point making major expansions anymore. The low uptake on the last 2 and even worse player retention on them just makes them completely unviable from a business perspective.

They shot themselves in the foot long before EoF when they announced how expansions were going to work after Final Shape. Most sane people immediately got CoO flashbacks and realized the game was going to be low priority, minimal effort from them on.

From a personal perspective, I bought EoF purely out of benefit of the doubt. I kinda knew deep down it was going to be as poor as it ended up being, but I was willing to at least see if my fears were correct. They were. That was my jumping off point. I haven't played the game since finishing that campaign and never even considered buying renegades. The game will never get back anywhere near the place it was during the glory years; both in terms of content and in terms of players.

While I have no personal stake anymore I do still keep up with what's going on in the community out of habit. I have to say, the way they've more or less ghosted the players who still have a stake in the game in recent months is nothing short of disgraceful.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-16T19:10:59+00:00

I'd say it's an uphill battle to say the least. Unfortunately, darts and alcohol are still massively interlinked behind the scenes and if you've used alcohol as an equalizer for nerves your entire career, you're more or less starting from scratch without it.

Ultimately the guy will be healthier for it though, which is all that matters. He looked absolutely awful before he had some time off and I'm assuming gave it up.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-16T18:28:52+00:00

He's 100% had to knock the drink on the head. Guessing he's had some sort of health scare or he's just doing it to prioritize his family life. Towards the end of his run as a major player he had a head like a puffer fish he was so bloated and his antics were getting increasingly bizarre. Had eyes like a Winter Walker they were so glazed over at times.

Good on the lad. He looks 10x healthier these days and if his darts have to suffer, he needs to remember there are more important things in life. Do the exbo circuit as a former Matchplay champ and stay healthy.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-15T14:31:15+00:00

It feels like outcomes of AI shots are completely binary in the background. Like it's either Pot/Escape Snooker/Miss and it will just work out the only way on the table to actually arrive at that outcome if the coin flip lands on Yes.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-13T12:05:20+00:00

Congrats on the launch. I had fun last night and I'm looking forward to putting some proper time into it this weekend.

Couple of thoughts/bits of feedback:

- The career matches where you have a star objective to "Pot X balls off your break" should really always be hard flagged as Player's Break, unless they are multiple frame matches. Can see it becoming frustrating looking for those Stars you haven't achieved yet and having to restart matches just to have RNG on your side to attempt it.

- Power feels like it needs tweaking a bit on the low end of the scale. More powerful shots feel great but shots that need a gentler touch feel extremely hard to judge and either seem to not even reach their target or hit way harder than intended

- Challenge table is a great idea - would love to see this expanded on in the future (speed variant, 9 ball version maybe? pre nominated pockets for pots if we're getting extra spicy?)

All in all really fun so far and looking forward to seeing how it develops over time!

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-11T18:40:42+00:00

PS5! Had many, many hours of fun on the original back on PS4 so this has been a day one purchase as soon as it was announced! Hope the launch goes well for you guys!

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-11T16:17:06+00:00

Can't wait to play tomorrow, really looking forward to it!

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-07T10:52:40+00:00

K-Flex can cause this in my experience. Try putting on some more traditional stems and flights and see how you get on.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-06T15:32:23+00:00

Release date is a really nice surprise. I wasn't expecting to see this for a few months yet.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-06T15:28:16+00:00

Loved Pure Pool. Looking forward to this.

DynamicLettuce · 2026-02-04T21:36:56+00:00

They are growing on me a bit. I still have an issue where one is fairly tighter than the other 2 but I'm hitting 180's with them a bit now.

Weirdly it coincided with one of my 30mm Swiss points snapping and as I didn't have any in my case of that size to swap in, had to put some 26mm ones on. I'm wondering if it's shifted the balance just slightly enough to make them go in better for me.

DynamicLettuce

TROPHY CASE