Marathon's Steam Player Count Briefly Fell To Less Than 1,000 Players

Concern For Marathon Grows As PC Player Count Drops To Triple Digits Bungie Published Aug 25, 2026, 5:09 AM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. Marathon has found a dedicated player base that loves Bungie’s newest game. Evidence that the player base might not be big enough to sustain Marathon, along with the studio that made it, continues to rear its head, though, as for the first time, its player count on Steam fell to below 1,000. Marathon's Player Count Falls Below 1,000 On PC Bungie The new low for Marathon has been highlighted by fans on its subreddit, as well as 2Calico, who called attention to it on Twitter. The Twitter post compares it to Hello Kitty Island Adventure, which is a little unfair, as the numbers being compared, while seemingly pulled from the same day, August 24, are from different times of day. As far as I can tell, there was no point when Hello Kitty Island Adventure’s player count was higher than Marathon’s on Monday. The new number being spotlighted is 987. Marathon’s player count was only sitting at that low for a very brief period of time, as even SteamDB hasn’t tracked it. The site posts player counts for each hour, and the hour during which Marathon’s count briefly fell below 1,000 is 6 am EST on Monday, at which point the average over that hour was 1,015 players. Where Does It End? Whether just below or just above 1,000 players, Marathon’s PC player count continues to sink, causing concern and leaving those left wondering just how low is too low for a game that’s entirely online and needs players to be constantly online to function. The glass half full approach would be to look at games like Concord and Highguard. Both of those live service failures had less than half the players Marathon still has now on PC, even during its quietest times of day. The pessimists among you might look at Destiny 2. The big game that earned Bungie its PlayStation acquisition will no longer get updates, yet at no point has its player count even come close to dipping under 10,000 on PC. To have ten times as many people sticking to Destiny 2 rather than playing Marathon is not a good sign for the latter’s long-term future. Then again, this is just one platform. There might be a lot more people playing Marathon on consoles, particularly PS5 since it’s technically a first-party PlayStation game. I sure hope so, otherwise there’s no telling what might become of Marathon in the near future. Released March 5, 2026 ESRB Teen / Animated Blood, Language, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact Developer(s) Bungie Publisher(s) Bungie Genre(s) Extraction Shooter, FPS, Multiplayer