Everything was fine, but Bungie had to mess up: the monetization of Marathon reveals the studio's rot

Everything was fine, but Bungie had to screw up: Marathon's monetization reveals the studio's rot

The game's rating is already sinking

The extraction shooter Marathon is out, and you can feel three decades of Bungie craftsmanship under the hood — especially when it comes to squeezing extra cash from players. It’s sold for $40, yet some systems inside act like the game forgot it's a paid product.

The central piece is a $10 premium battle pass. Pay up and then spend dozens of hours grinding for rewards; that’s the setup, plain and simple. Folks who skip the pass end up watching their time feel wasted. Yes, passes do not expire — a small mercy — but that hardly cancels the rest of the design choices.

Compare, e.g., Apex Legends: there the rewards often help you cover future passes. In Marathon, no such thing — there’s no Lux drip in season rewards. The season-one haul looks thin: one character skin and a few single-use patches/charms that disappear after use. Bungie ran into similar complaints in Destiny 2, and it’s frustrating to see the same sticky spots resurface.

The pricing is the kicker. Skins are 1120 Lux; the nearest bundles are 1100 Lux for $10 and 2250 Lux for $20. Do the math and you get nudged into spending an extra $5 for the missing 500 Lux. That’s deliberate-looking friction — call it poor optics or, more bluntly, a cheap manipulation. The shooter itself can be fun, but this leaves a sour aftertaste.

Marathon’s Steam score is warm right now. Still, a high rating doesn’t erase the design choices that make parts of the experience feel engineered to milk you—nor should it stop people from pointing that out.