If you were hoping that Marathon’s new PvE mode would be the shot in the arm the extraction shooter desperately needs, I’ve got some bad news: it’s not. The mode itself is genuinely good—a roguelike twist on the formula that finally gives solo players something to do—but player numbers are still tanking, and Bungie’s latest Hail Mary feels less like a revival and more like a last gasp.
What Is Vault Breaker?
Season 2: NIGHTFALL dropped a limited-time PvE mode called Vault Breaker. The pitch is simple: you enter the Cryo Archive with a Sponsored Kit, grab a Vault Key Card, find the matching terminal, and crack open a vault to collect Indexes. Then you either exfil or push deeper into progressively harder rooms, with a timer counting down the whole time. Any loot you find stays in that run—only the Indexes convert into permanent upgrades for your starting loadout.
It’s a smart system. The roguelike progression means you gradually turn a trash-tier starting kit into something that can actually clear rooms. Attachments and weapon rarities matter more than ever, and the fact that you can start with an Enhanced Shield after a few runs removes some of the RNG frustration that plagues the base extraction mode. For a game that has always felt punishingly AI-heavy when playing solo, Vault Breaker finally gives you a path that doesn’t involve getting stomped by squads with end-game loot.
“As punishing as matches could feel due to the UESC bots and the smaller map size… it occupied a niche between ARC Raiders and Escape From Tarkov.”
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Here’s the rub: none of that quality matters if nobody is playing. Marathon peaked at 14,809 concurrent players on Steam in the past 24 hours—less than half of what Season 2 managed during its free week. To put that in perspective, Destiny 2, a game that just ended its support and is over five years old on Steam, hit 55,602 players in the same window. Bungie’s newer, shinier live-service title is getting outplayed by its own legacy.
The comparison stings because Destiny 2 has far more PvE content, and Marathon’s PvE mode is temporary. Even ARC Raiders, which is currently in a content lull, still has a healthier player base. Embark’s game might be moving to two major updates a year, but at least people are sticking around. Marathon is bleeding players faster than a Rook on a bad run.
Why Vault Breaker Isn’t Enough
Part of the problem is that Vault Breaker feels like a band-aid on a bullet wound. It addresses the “I don’t want to deal with PvP” crowd, but it’s a limited-time mode—not a permanent fixture. And while the roguelike loop is satisfying, it doesn’t change the fact that the core extraction experience still feels shallow outside of its combat. The menus are awful, the social features are nonexistent, and the map variety is thin.
Bungie has also lost its game director, Joe Ziegler, who announced his departure days before the mid-season update. Sure, live-service games lose directors all the time—Joe Blackburn left Destiny 2 right before The Final Shape—but losing the person who steered Marathon for years, mere months after launch, signals instability. The ship will keep running, but the captain just jumped overboard.
The Broader Extraction Shooter Mess
Marathon launched into a genre that is already crowded and increasingly hostile to newcomers. ARC Raiders has its own dedicated audience, Escape From Tarkov is still the king of hardcore extraction, and Hunt: Showdown keeps chugging along. Even Call of Duty’s DMZ mode, which is effectively dead, proved that casual extraction shooters have a ceiling. Bungie aimed for the hardcore niche, and it worked—for about a month.
The irony is that Marathon’s solo experience, which Vault Breaker tries to salvage, was already being compared to survival horror. The tension of creeping through the Cryo Archive with limited resources, hearing UESC bots chatter, and knowing one wrong move could end your run—that’s the same feeling Alien: Isolation or Alan Wake 2 nail. But those are single-player games with a beginning, middle, and end. Marathon is a live-service extraction shooter that expects you to keep coming back to a puddle that’s evaporating.
What Comes Next?
Bungie’s roadmap for Marathon only extends to Season 3, which starts September 22nd. After that? A reworked Perimeter map, a new Runner Shell, and some loot. No new major mode, no expansion to Cryo Archive, no offline option (PlayStation reportedly said no). Hardcore fans might stick around for the story, but Destiny proved that Bungie is perfectly capable of driving off even its most loyal players—sometimes permanently.
The studio has laid off over half its workforce, slashed costs, and pinned its hopes on this one game. At a reported $200–$250 million budget, Marathon hasn’t come close to breaking even. The new PvE mode is a genuine improvement, but it’s not the lifeline the game needs. It’s a well-designed lifeboat on a sinking ship.
Enjoy the depths while they last, because the tide is going out fast.
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