Bungie's financial troubles ran far deeper than most players realize. The studio was circling the drain long before Sony's $3.7 billion acquisition or Marathon ever launched, according to a former community manager who watched the collapse firsthand.
Liana Ruppert, who worked in community management at Bungie, broke silence on the company's trajectory as fans continue to pit Destiny 2's player numbers against the newer extraction shooter. The chatter online is simple: if Bungie hadn't abandoned Destiny 2 to chase Marathon, the live service would still be thriving. The numbers seem to back this up. Destiny 2 pulled 167,000 concurrent players on Steam when its final update dropped, dwarfing Marathon's all-time peak of 77,358.
But the narrative misses a crucial point, Ruppert argued. "This fight was pre-Sony," she wrote in response to criticism that the Japanese gaming giant should have given Destiny 2 more runway. "Bungie was below the red line before the Sony acquisition. If it wasn't acquired right then, the studio was very close to shutting its doors at the very least on Destiny. It was an emergency acquisition."
In other words, Sony didn't kill Destiny 2. Bungie's own problems did. The acquisition wasn't a strategic pivot by a wealthy parent company, but a lifeline thrown to a studio in free fall.
That context matters as players flood social media demanding Destiny 3. Some have even crashed live chats at gaming showcases, including Sony's State of Play, screaming for the next installment. It's an understandable impulse from a devoted fanbase watching their favorite game fade into maintenance mode. But Ruppert offered a counterintuitive take: supporting Marathon now is the only way to keep Bungie around long enough to make Destiny 3 eventually.
"Half the community is going to hate me for saying this, but the only way to keep Bungie alive right now is to support Marathon," she said. "People keep comparing Marathon numbers to Destiny and frankly, that's ignorant. Marathon was never designed to do those numbers."
The extraction shooter was built for a completely different audience, she noted, more in line with games like Escape from Tarkov than Destiny 2. Bungie's design teams were transparent about this from the start, keeping ambitions modest and development streamlined. Marathon wasn't meant to be a competitor for Destiny's massive concurrent player base, but rather a smaller, focused title that could support itself and generate revenue while the company stabilized.
By those metrics, Marathon is performing as expected. "Marathon scratches a small but VERY loyal niche," Ruppert explained. "And it's doing a good job at it. Marathon has a beyond killer team."
The player count comparisons, meanwhile, tell only part of the story. Steam displays concurrent numbers publicly, but PlayStation and Xbox keep their figures private. Both games have substantially larger audiences on those platforms, though the actual totals remain unknown. A true accounting of Marathon's health requires data that fans simply don't have access to.
What's clear is that Bungie faces an uncertain future. Destiny 2's final content update is now live, and the studio has shifted almost entirely to Marathon development and support. Rumors of fresh layoffs are circulating. The company that built one of gaming's most beloved live service franchises is running lean and focused on a title that doesn't generate anywhere near the same player enthusiasm.
But that's the reality Bungie chose, or rather, the reality it was forced into by its own financial crisis. No amount of fan nostalgia will reverse Destiny 2's sunset. What matters now is whether Marathon can generate enough sustained revenue and goodwill to keep Bungie solvent. If players want a future with the studio at all, let alone a potential Destiny 3 years down the line, Ruppert's message is clear: support the game Bungie is making now, not the one they're leaving behind.
Author Emily Chen: "The real story here isn't that Sony killed Destiny 2, it's that Bungie nearly killed itself, and now its survival depends on whether players care enough about Marathon to help it succeed."
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