According to a report from Forbes’ Paul Tassi, who’s been writing about Destiny for years and has contacts close to the studio, Bungie decided to lift the Marathon Alpha’s NDA at the last minute after the gameplay reveal received a lukewarm reception.
Though gameplay of Marathon has been made public, it’s been in a very controlled environment. Bungie has only shown off what they want to outside of the very small pool of creators invited out to play early.
Even through that fairly narrow lens, players are still skeptical of just how good Marathon will be. Reactions after the reveal weren’t overly negative, but they were mixed. Especially considering it’ll be a paid, multiplayer-only title.
Multiple sources close to Forbes’ Paul Tassi have told him that leadership at Bungie got nervous about the reaction to Marathon’s reveal, leading them to lift the NDA and give out more Alpha codes.
Marathon lifts NDA as Bungie fears the worst
Considering the large-scale layoffs at Bungie that hit the developer in 2024 and their subsequent scaling back of their commitment to Destiny 2 content updates, it’s safe to say that a lot is riding on Marathon’s success for Bungie.
Prior reports claimed that initial internal playtests of the game didn’t go over particularly well. While they didn’t objectively hate it, testers weren’t inclined to play more at the time either. This was in late 2023, so the devs have had time to iron out the kinks.
However, the official gameplay reveal and streamer gameplay didn’t win people over as much as Bungie hoped. When they initially announced the Alpha for Marathon, it was sold as a closed Alpha with no streaming or recording. That quickly changed.
“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,” Bungie explained in a Twitter post.
“In the spirit of building towards that future, we’ve decided to remove the NDA from our Closed Alpha Test. Everyone can share their thoughts, feedback, and footage, including streaming starting on April 23.”
This may be entirely true, but Tassi’s sources claim there were other motivations here.
For one, their Alpha is a real technical test. They have to keep the player count on the smaller side to keep servers from getting overloaded, although they’ve already accepted a great number of people who signed up for the test, and even gave them friend codes. It remains to be seen just how well servers will fare.
However, a big motivator here is that the gameplay reveal allegedly made Bungie’s team nervous. They want to get the game in people’s hands as soon as possible and try to make this Alpha a much bigger release.
“After the reaction to the gameplay reveal, leadership was nervous but they tried to reassure teams. Ultimately, they figured it would shift the narrative if the NDA was lifted,” Tassi’s sources claim. Additionally, there will now be an open beta in August according to these leaks to try and court more players and push them to pre-order.
Speaking of which, that’s the last topic his sources discussed: Price. Marathon is projected to be $40 at launch, which is exactly what other sources have claimed in the past. However, the new info here is that there are other editions of the game that’ll cost more than that base price.
It isn’t clear how much those other editions will be, but it’s been made clear this title will have an asking price no matter what. It’s too late to pivot to free-to-play, so Marathon’s opening weeks will be essential if Bungie wants to foster and grow a player base.
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