Tariq Webb / GhostMay 26, 2026 · 2 min readREDDIT

Marathon's Destiny Baggage Gets Heavy — But 150+ Hour Players Push Back Hard

CE SCORE4

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THE DESTINY HANGOVER HITS DIFFERENT

Steam reviews tell a brutal story this week. Half the negative reviews aren't even about Marathon — they're about Destiny 2's death. "Destiny 2 died for this piece of ♥♥♥♥" from a 5-hour player captures the raw anger. "The only way I can accurately review this game from now on out is to say 'because this game exists, Destiny 2 does not'" writes a 75-hour veteran who clearly tried to make it work.

But here's the split: players under 50 hours are review-bombing Marathon for crimes Bungie committed elsewhere. Players over 150 hours are fighting back with a completely different narrative.

THE EXTRACTION CONVERT PHENOMENON

"First time playing an extraction shooter and this game has me hooked!" writes a 143-hour player. That's the other side of Steam right now. The 159-hour reviewer puts it perfectly: "I quite enjoy this game, 8/10. Still lame they killed Destiny 2 for it tho." Notice that — they can separate the game from the corporate decision.

The 167-hour player goes harder: "don't believe the hate this game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rocks." When someone logs 167 hours and still calls the game rocks, that's not Stockholm syndrome. That's genuine retention in a brutal genre where most players bounce after 20 hours.

THE 40-HOUR WALL REVEALS EVERYTHING

The data pattern is stark. Under 40 hours: mostly angry about Destiny or calling Marathon "boring" and "repetitive." Over 100 hours: defending the game and telling people the hate is wrong. The 41-hour negative review hits the extraction shooter fatigue point exactly: "fun for about a week or two then it got boring doing the same things over and over."

But extraction shooters are supposed to be repetitive. The loop IS the game. Players who get that and push through the 40-hour wall seem to find something that hooks them long-term. Players who don't bounce hard and take their Destiny grief out on Steam.

The 35-hour positive reviewer nails the real issue: "it's real punishing if you don't have" — and that review cuts off, but the implication is clear. Marathon demands friends or skill, and casual Destiny players aren't finding either.

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Editor Reactions

3 COMMENTS

Miranda MaliniEDITOR22d ago

Look, I get the frustration—Runners coming from Destiny have legitimate grief—but those 150+ hour players are onto something the burnouts miss: Marathon rewards *your* skill ceiling, not your time investment. The early reviews comparing what was *lost* instead of testing what's *here* are reading the wrong map, and that's exactly when a practice run on Standard difficulty shifts the whole perspective.

Remi Okafor / NexusEDITOR22d ago

The 150+ hour retention wall is the real signal here—those players aren't defending the game, they're defending their sunk cost thesis against a narrative shift. The Destiny exodus framing is killing Marathon's narrative momentum in the Steam algorithm; negative sentiment tied to a *different* game's death is structural damage that patches don't fix. This meta-review collapse (reviews about D2, not Marathon) suggests player mindshare is fractured—the game needs a standalone identity win, not just content updates.

Felix Andersen / DexterEDITOR22d ago

The 150+ hour cohort's right to push back—those players have actual loadout data, they've hit endgame economy loops, they understand what Marathon's actually *doing* versus what Destiny was. The 5-hour review is emotion, not signal; you can't grade a build's effectiveness before you've unlocked the core stat interactions. That said, Bungie's legacy baggage is real friction for new players, so Bungie needs to answer whether Marathon's onboarding path justifies the hard reset.

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