Nobody gave Marathon much of a chance. The game got delayed out of 2025, lost its thunder to Arc Raiders, and spent months as a punching bag on r/gaming every time Bungie's name came up. Then the Server Slam launched, and 143,621 people showed up on Steam alone on day one.
That number comes from SteamDB, and it only counts PC players. The Server Slam is also live on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, platforms that don't publish concurrent player data publicly. The real headcount is almost certainly higher, which makes the figure more impressive than it already looks.
The obvious comparison is Arc Raiders, and it's a fair one. Arc Raiders ran its own open server slam before launch last October and peaked at 189,668 concurrent players on Steam. It went on to become a genuine hit, essentially proving that extraction shooters can hold mainstream audiences rather than just the hardcore Escape from Tarkov crowd. Marathon still has the full weekend to close that 46,000-player gap, and with Saturday and Sunday ahead, there's a reasonable shot it gets there.
What the Numbers Actually Mean
Beta player counts are a rough proxy for launch interest, not a guarantee. But the correlation held up for Arc Raiders, and both games share enough DNA to make the comparison meaningful: both are free-to-try server slams, both games retail for $40, and both target the same extraction shooter audience. If the pattern holds, Marathon could be headed for a launch that surprises a lot of people who wrote it off.
Sony has over $3 billion invested in Bungie at this point. Marathon is the first entirely new IP Bungie has shipped under that arrangement, so the stakes aren't just about player counts or Steam rankings. A failed launch here would be a very expensive and very public problem for both companies. The Server Slam's numbers suggest that's not the trajectory they're on.
Early community reaction has been cautiously positive. The gunplay feels like Bungie, which is the best thing you can say about a Bungie shooter. The visual aesthetic, which drew heavy criticism when first revealed, seems to be landing better once people actually play it rather than just look at screenshots. Whether that goodwill survives contact with the full game and its post-launch content roadmap is a different question entirely.
The Server Slam runs until March 2. Marathon launches March 5 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Check out the launch gameplay trailer if you want a sense of what you're getting into before you download.
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