Marathon is in a sprint

Marathon is weird as hell — and I mean that in the best possible way. The latest game from Destiny studio Bungie mixes the slick gunplay the developer is known for with a dark, and frankly bizarre, sci-fi universe. It’s part of the burgeoning “extraction shooter” subgenre, where teams of players are dropped into a hostile environment and tasked with getting the hell out. After just a few hours with the game, I’m eager to play more, both because the core action is so satisfying and to make sense of this mystifying universe. But as much as I’m enjoying Marathon right now, I’m also wary about its future because I have no idea how long it will last.

The live-service shooter space is a mess. As publishers and developers have chased the highs of Fortnite, the field has become completely volatile. And you don’t need to look very far to see that; on the same day that Marathon launched, Highguard released its final update before it shuts down for good in a week. Marathon is weird and captivating, but in this space, that’s no guarantee of success.

What’s most startling is the sheer speed at which recent live-service games have been deemed failures. Wildlight Entertainment, the studio behind Highguard, said the game reached 2 million players, and yet it will shut down less than two months after it first launched. Titles from established companies are being treated the same; just a few weeks after it launched its League of Legends fighting game 2XKO, Riot laid off a chunk of the development team, saying that “the game has resonated with a passionate core audience, but overall momentum hasn’t reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term.” Even studios known for single-player games, like Alan Wake developer Remedy, have dabbled in the space with some disastrous results.

It’s clear why companies keep trying. While many live-service games fail, the hits are massive. Fortnite has become a cultural juggernaut connected to everything from Disney to Chappell Roan, while League has kept Riot going for more than a decade. These games are both lucrative and enduring. It’s a tough space to crack at this point — though not impossible, as the success of Arc Raiders and Helldivers 2 has shown — but the payoff has captivated gaming execs.

What’s less clear is why new games like Highguard and 2XKO have been given such short runways to succeed. In such an ultra-competitive space, a few weeks is nowhere near enough time for a game to establish itself. It took a long time before Fortnite and League became the forces they are — Fortnite started out as a survival game before following PUBG’s battle royale lead — and they came up in a time of less competition and smaller expectations. And League may be huge, but it too has struggled, with Riot having mixed results in expanding the franchise. In today’s climate, Highguard never really stood a chance.