Marathon, the upcoming multiplayer game from Bungie, will not include one particular feature for fear of promoting ‘toxicity.’
Bungie’s Marathon reboot was first revealed at the 2023 PlayStation showcase, but it was only on April 13, 2025, that players finally got a glimpse of the game in action. The upcoming extraction shooter lets you play as “Runners,” essentially humans who gave up their bodies for enhanced cybernetic abilities.
With a focus on multiplayer and PvP, you and your team will have to pick up different kinds of loot, complete objectives, and navigate a challenging world where other players or aggressive AI enemies could take you out at any moment.
With this kind of premise, it’s only natural that a proximity chat feature would come across players’ minds. After all, many other similar games have implemented this feature to add to the sense of realism. However, devs have confirmed that there won’t be such a feature in Marathon.
Marathon won’t have proximity chat as devs want to create a “safe space”
Marathon will allow players to play as Runners with different abilities.
In an interview with PC Gamer, game director Joe Ziegler claimed that the team isn’t “against the experience” of proximity chat. When it comes to this feature, however, he mentioned that the challenge is making sure the team is “creating a safe environment for players inside of that space.”
If you’ve played games with proximity chat before, then you’re likely already familiar with how it can be like a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, you may hear some of the most hilarious things in-game, but things can get ugly really quickly when people use this feature to harass others or trash-talk others. Things like these tend to happen in games that implement this feature.
Regarding proximity chat and its risks, he added that he doesn’t think “anyone really has a good solution to that just yet.” However, this doesn’t mean it will be completely off-limits, at least once the team figures out a solution.
“Because we’re so dedicated to making sure that we’re creating a safe space where we don’t have players just flaming each other or doing terrible things to one another, I think we’re not ready to invest in [proximity] chat until we have a solution,” he explained.
Though the lack of proximity chat may be disappointing to some players, the good news is Marathon will be launching its Alpha playtest soon, so you can get a feel of the game early before it gets released on September 24, 2025.
Source link
