GOING GOLD FILMS

@TheRug85 She retired so they could finally win a couple of games. Stay classy Ipswich.

Imagine being this full of disrespect and hate towards an 84 year old woman and pensioner, who for nearly 2 decades, with fuck all resources, with the club she ran, completely dominated a bankrolled Ipswich Town.

It matters because the accusation is ‘virtue signalling’ that means they are being load about certain world views for example. I’m 100+ hours in and I could not tell you what agenda they have. I’ve casually read a few codex entries and it just seems adjacent to most sci-fi, and the game isn’t trying to force codex entries on me.

@goinggoldfilms @TanethGG @Pirat_Nation If it’s in the game it’s in the game man doesn’t matter if it’s a codex entry or not

Former Square Enix executive Jacob Navok has said that Sony appears to have little faith in Bungie’s Marathon due to the very limited marketing push behind the game. Navok wrote: “Sony owns a ton of digital real estate on the Playstation dashboards to push Marathon. It’s lack of marketing push to support the numbers speaks to the lack of faith from the platform holder.” He added: “GAAS games don’t grow organically. The dirty secret is most of them grow through marketing and UA spend. Sony has left this one for dead.” Marathon launched on March 5, 2026 and reached a peak of approximately 88,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch but has since declined sharply

@PiggyKropotkinn 100% would love this. Sponsored Kit Marsh kinda feels like this but still can sometimes take a while to get into. A rook only training / death match would be fun and narratively work for the game.

What sucks about Marathon is it feels like I need a warmup every day to dull my nerves and straighten my head but unfortunately it costs gear to do that I do wish this game had an arena mode of some sort

@saucelordRP @KingRichard That would then just play too similar to extracting I think. Random spawns of DCONS you can send back stuff would be cool making it less of a POI and just something you stumble across early or mid game.

@KingRichard What about an area on the map that has a transport container heavily guarded only one team can use to transfer some loot back to the armory but can only be used once

Marathon went a little too hardcore and it was one of its biggest mistakes. One thing that should have never happened is releasing a hardcore extraction shooter with no form of a safe pocket. No other game in the genre has done it. With all the hate and things working against it they should not have attempted to reinvent the wheel. I promise you if they had some form of safe pocket its outcome would be different. In this day and age where everyone cheats and exploits because they suck and hate losing you have to have a way for people to get wins even in their loses. If I was @MarathonDevTeam I would implement a safe pocket immediately for season 2

@ReconTrackDrone @KryDotExe TBH that’s also most sci-fi tho.

@KryDotExe It’s inherently transhumanist and anti corporation

Genuinely what is woke about Marathon Every time a comment like this is made and people ask “what is woke about it” they never reply

@FeeshSniper @TanethGG @Pirat_Nation Well I’m not sure ‘Virtue signalling’ being buried in the codex makes it virtue signalling. By definition even if it was some ‘agenda’ they are pushing they are not shoving it down your throat.

@goinggoldfilms @TanethGG @Pirat_Nation He literally did and you just do t want to read it?

@GaminCounselor ‘It appears’ is quite loose and tbh I saw plenty of Marathon marketing and streamer campaigns so Sony deff. Signed off ad spend

So does this imply Sony wants Marathon to fail so they can take full control of bungie finally? if so thats pretty dirty but so was bungie selling themselves for 3.6b off the lies of Pete Parson.

@TanethGG @Pirat_Nation Still waiting for the specific virtue signalling in Marathon … beyond ‘it’s probably in the codex entries’

I never said it was bad. But saying it doesn't virtue signal is down right dishonest. Since you dont want to read my comments to others here, I'll post here what I said to the other guy that blocked me. Dont cry its TLDR. You clearly haven't been paying attention to the Codex and just play the extration shooter like a midndless EFT drone. Examples often cited by critics as virtue signaling revolve around public-facing corporate statements and social media posts, which some consumers perceive as performative rather than impactful, particularly when contrasted with internal studio culture or business decisions. -Social Media Advocacy: Critics have sometimes labeled Bungie's public support for social causes (such as Pride Month or social justice issues) on social media as "performative" or virtue signaling, something we clearly saw in Destiny 2. -Pronoun Usage and Inclusivity: Many community members have criticized the company's focus on inclusivity, such as the inclusion of pronouns in bios or specific language initiatives, viewing them as examples of "woke" virtue signaling rather than genuine improvements to the gaming experience. The androgenous non-binary design of characters is a choice clearly stated by Bungie on social media which they clearly hid comments to avoid further backlash. -Latinx" Terminology: A specific example often brought up is the company's use of terms like "Latinx" or similar, which some users claimed was a performative, top-down attempt to appear inclusive -Charity Activities for the LGBT and SPLC multi-year connection to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) through charitable giving and, as of April 2026 and facing scrutiny for this association. Not to mention the stolen art from the creator without consent that almost killed the game before launch bringing insane backlash. So yes, the studio and the game itself in the codex pushes the woke agenda in many ways, shapes and form with subtle handwaving but always there. Denying it is simply a dishonest conversation. This is precisely the reason whay it has cause a MASSIVE divide in the community. Those who point at the truth and those hypocrite enough to ignore it or agree with it because they feel identified. These criticisms often arise from a subset of players who believe that developers should focus solely on the game rather than on social or political messaging.

@TanethGG @Pirat_Nation Still waiting for what’s virtue signalling in the game. Feels pretty standard sci-fi … nothing to identify with. Just a hardcore shooter and I enjoy the gunplay.

@goinggoldfilms @Pirat_Nation Maybe you missed it because you identify with it. Feeling enlightened yet you condescending prick?

@TanethGG @Pirat_Nation Sorry I missed the virtue signalling in Marathon … enlighten me.

@Pirat_Nation Not exactly DoA like Highguard but never the less the triology will be completed soon. The people have spoken and the numbers dont lie. Either make great games with no virtue signaling agendas or watch this trend continue.

@Apogee_Ent Metal Gear on the Game Boy Color

Oh you’re a gamer? Name a game you never finished.

@piratesmurf24 Your not as important as you think you are. Congrats on promotion and jog on.

Doubled by Ipswich town , sold us there best ever player and watch us getting promoted again. A season to forget for Norwich you'd think #itrc

@PolishTamales A wipe will help attract new players - if they play it right,

As June slowly approaches, Marathon's players are facing with the reality of a complete clean slate to their progress. Wipes are part of extraction shooters, but it's jarring to those completely new to the genre. Will this be the final nail on the coffin?

40 odd likes suggest most people understood what I meant but if you need it expanded I’ll break it down for you. After a few hours the game is much easier as you have green shields, green guns and meds in your vault and can load in not feeling as vulnerable. From there on it the game starts to become more enjoyable. The demo could have skipped the initial couple of hours where you can’t find meds, die quickly and have terrible starting guns. This would have been less brutal than the server slam and I believe seen a better hype between server slam to game launch.

@goinggoldfilms @casualblu3 "They should have had a vertical slice demo with green kits or something" quite literally beginner gear that you could access in the playtest you moron.

Marathon is a victim of 4 things: 1.​Sony’s live service reputation. 2.​ Bungie’s D2 baggage. 3.​ Online grifters who's most played game is steamdb player charts. 4. ​The playtests were terrible. ​The game itself is genuinely one of the best shooters in a decade.

@Be_likeMango @grok Grok I got you. It’s Laura Woods - Sports Pundit in the UK. Does lots of soccer (football) TV & Radio

@JNavok @CarpensSam 😅 they saw a few dwarfs die so the fact this one is keeping its head above water might mean they keep it alive.

@CarpensSam @goinggoldfilms so you're saying the Marathon launch is Sony's tallest dwarf

In 2012, Disney released John Carter. It was an infamous bomb, with Disney taking a $200m loss. A lot of ink was spilled on it at the time. Earlier this week, Marathon and Destiny 2 inverted; on Tuesday, at one point, D2 had a higher player count than Marathon. $3.6bn in acquisition cost + $400m (between cost of game estimated at $250m and cost of marketing + other assumed costs at $150m or more) is a $4bn sinkhole. Bungie made around $55m in revenue if we believe the leaks, and probably not much more since launch based on player count loss. That is a wider project cash loss than John Carter, ignoring the acquisition costs. It's curious to me that the Japanese press and stock analysts haven't been louder on this, because we're looking at one of the biggest potential write downs in games history, and one of the bigger losses in media history as well if we consider acquisition value. (This probably speaks to the cowardice of the Japanese business press.) If Bungie had other potential projects/assets/bets, you could justify not doing a full writedown on that basis, but with the founding team mostly gone, Destiny 2 in life support mode and I assume any other project years away, what keeps up the Bungie asset value for Sony? Has there been a similar case of cash + value destruction in media so quickly? One could have cited Warner Bros if it wasn't for the Netflix/Paramount bidding war making Zaslav into a hero. I'm also skeptical that ATVI was worth what MS paid for it given COD performance. Also Roblox last night had the equivalent amount of market cap vanish. Anyway, back in the day, you would see the senior executives of the company in Japan call a press conference and bow their heads in shame apologizing for the loss they're going to have to announce. But even with Concord blowing $400m, in 2024 Sony made enough money off service revenue to goose the overall earnings and sweep it under the rug and so that never came to pass. I'm normally a staunch management defender. In this case I would have expected heads to roll. I suppose Jim Ryan being long gone makes this easier, as you can point the finger at the architect-- which is what AT&T did when they sold WB at a loss to Discovery. But after he left Sony should have been more carefully shepherding these bets because they all had material ongoing costs + expectations, and that does not seem to have happened. I also would have expected a Sony IR release about Marathon's status (good or bad), yet we saw nothing since launch. And as I wrote about earlier this week, Marathon post-launch user acquisition has been very limited. It'll be interesting to see what happens at the next earnings call. I assume a big write down, as I mentioned some weeks back, which would explain the quiet period. If they don't, I guess it will be the quarter after, with them citing a S2 launch re-engagement attempt as the excuse, or at least delaying until Sony can get some other earnings to run cover for them.

@TIger598197 @JNavok Unless they can address some of the reasons and people do stay longer. Fix onboarding and the initial grind could help. Some of the issues might not be fixed though, because they probably need a bigger player base to fix some of the matchmaking complaints.

@goinggoldfilms @JNavok theyre not even touching 20K players anymore, theyre on track for hitting sub 15K on sunday night but as early as tomorrow night. We havent even hit the floor yet. S2 launch, sure theyll get some people back theyll play a few games, then remember why they left in the 1st place

@Inspectorherm @nuAngelics I am not Sony and I am not arguing their expectations. My point is this is a fun game and if you buy it you would get your monies worth regardless of if it gets shuts down in a year or 6 months.

@goinggoldfilms @nuAngelics Somy spent like $3 billion on bungie. They are way more invested in how well it does than the fans. They are expecting fortnite levels

the best fps to come out in a long time . you are doing yourself a disservice to not play this game and give it a chance. i cant stop playing

@Inspectorherm @nuAngelics I’m fine with a decent PVP game to last me 6 months 200+ hours for £40. The culture of shitting on GAAS because they done get Fortnite level of success needs to stop. #marathonthegame

@nuAngelics Does it even matter if bungie is gonna rugpull it 6 months from now