Whether it was genuine curiosity or the result of all the marketing Bungie had done, the Server Slam for Marathon attracted a solid number of players. The extraction shooter peaked at 143,621 concurrent players on Steam roughly an hour after going live yesterday.
Unfortunately, it seems that momentum wasn’t sustained into Day 2, as there are currently only 64,952 players on right now. That could increase during the weekend, but it may have fallen due to various criticisms regarding the user interface, art style, and whatnot. This Reddit post points out how difficult it is to discern from a green rarity shield that’s slightly better than the other in one’s inventory, though filtering by item value somewhat helps.
A Twitter user, Kelski, also noted the excessive combination of fonts, capitalised letters, bolded letters, and spaces in the Contracts menu, describing how much of an “absolute eyesore” it can be. As far as the visuals, some are praising the lighting and retro-futuristic look of it, while others aren’t quite on board (and that’s not getting into optimization). Then again, it’s entirely subjective.
Of course, this isn’t the full game, which launches on March 5th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. It’s possible that Bungie already has fixes on the way for several issues, so stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, head here for everything you should know about Marathon.
It’s impressive to see such a high number of concurrent players during the Server Slam! It’s always exciting when a game generates this kind of buzz, and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves from here. Looking forward to what Bungie has in store next!