Marathon gets off to a hot start with over 100,000 concurrent players

With Highguard failing spectacularly, the internet’s ire fell upon the next big live service game due to launch in Q1, 2026: Marathon. Chided as Concord 3.0, many predicted the extraction shooter would fail because of its live-service model. Its free-to-play server slam has kicked off, and Marathon is posting some serious numbers.

SteamDB’s charts indicate Marathon has a peak player count of 143,621, with over 100,000 players online at the time of writing. And this is just on PC. A not-so-insignificant playerbase will be on the PS5 and Xbox Series S|X as well. While there’s no way to track those numbers directly, even the most conservative estimate will put the maximum player count between the 250,000-300,000 range. That number will almost certainly go up once the weekend is in full swing.

Marathon’s server slam will let you try out the game for free between now and March 2, 22:00 PT. It goes without saying that not all players will buy the game at launch, but even of 25% pull the trigger, it be more of a success than Highguard and Concord. Its main competitor, Arc Raiders, had over 250,000 players at launch, and it’ll be interesting to see how many players Marathon can pull.

Despite numerous delays and a jarring controversy over plagiarised fan art, Bungie fans had been looking forward to Marathon for years. Given the state Destiny 2 is in, they were understandably eager for a new IP. Gameplay-wise, it is far too early to draw judgment, but the overall consensus is mostly positive.