In spring 2023, Bungie surprised everyone with the reveal for Marathon – a new retelling of its iconic franchise for as a extraction shooter. After success with Destiny 2, Bungie is continuing the trend of live-service with the Marathon series. The downside: Marathon was delayed with plans to release sometime in 2025 as of last year.
More recently, Bungie has addressed many of the lingering questions for the new Marathon. Hosting a livestream, it reveals a new release date for September 2025. Additionally, Bungie is following the footsteps of PlayStation premium pricing for live-service games – $40, it is revealed. There is also a closed alpha scheduled for later in April as well.
However, after soaking for many players, there is a new notion for Marathon moving forward. Bungie announced that Marathon come the exclusive playtest will not require an NDA after consideration of the feedback reflected online by interested users.
“As developers we believe community feedback and dialog is essential to make the best version of Marathon. Up until now, this feedback has come from closed playtest sessions. In the spirit of building towards that future, we’ve decided to remove the NDA from our Closed Alpha Test. […] Bungie adds: “This is a true closed technical test of Marathon. What that means is that you’ll be playing an incomplete version of the game. Our primary goal is to test two things: technical capabilities and our moment-to-moment gameplay loop. We plan to break stuff.”
The closed alpha is to take place from April 23rd to May 4th. Sources told Forbes that the decision to retract its NDA plans are a result of the gameplay reveal; internally teams at Bungie were in need of reassurance and leadership believed the rug pull would paint the playtest a better shade ahead of release. It’s understood an open test is expected to come sometime in August 2025. And, free-to-play is not a consideration for the full product.
Are you surprised by this new development for Marathon?
Marathon releases on September 23, 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
Source: Bungie
