After it initially seemed as if Bungie wanted to prevent Marathon players from talking about Arc Raiders, there are now signs of détente. The corresponding chat filter has been removed, and the developers are supporting each other.
Marathon is not having an easy time of it at the moment. That’s because Bungie’s new extraction shooter is pushing into a market niche that was occupied just a few months ago by the extremely successful competitor Arc Raiders from Swedish studio Embark. The two games share the same genre, release period, and even price.
However, people perceive Marathon much more negatively, partly due to its idiosyncratic art style, and are already predicting the next flop à la Highguard and Concord.
When problems with overloaded menus, poor player guidance, and poor balance came to light during the recent Server Slam, some players suspected malicious intent on the part of the Bungie team due to a small detail: The name Arc Raiders
was changed to during the Marathon chat.
For some users, it was clear: the developers wanted to prevent Marathon players from talking about the competing product or writing in chat that Arc Raiders was the better game. After all, the two games are fierce rivals.
However, the censorship was probably not intentional. The Marathon team reacted quickly and removed the filter for Arc Raiders
. The name of the competitor can now be written in the chat without any problems, as Bungie itself demonstrated in a screenshot of the game’s text chat. There they write: Arc Raiders is great
.
The Arc Raiders developers responded to this in a tweet in which they replied to the Bungie team:& nbsp;Whether you’re a runner or a raider, loot is loot. We’ll save you a seat on the shuttle.
The developers want to say: It doesn’t matter what game you play, as long as you have fun doing it.
— Marathon Development Team (@MarathonDevTeam) February 26, 2026
Great behavior
The communities of both games are celebrating the interaction between the two development studios in a Reddit thread.
Sea-Housing-3435 writes: It’s great to see this mature behavior from both development teams. Stupid fanboyism is toxic and useless.
And masivedelcaribe adds: Thank you for allowing me to be alive in time to play both games
.
User Toq-titan notes with a touch of sarcasm: “In true Arc Raiders fashion, the devs are just pretending to be friendly so they can stab the poor folks at Bungie in the back.” After all, whether Marathon will be able to win over players at launch is still anyone’s guess after the commotion surrounding the server slam.
However, Marathon does have some features that set it apart from Arc Raiders: there are playable classes, similar to a hero shooter. And while Arc Raiders is a third-person shooter, Marathon uses the classic first-person perspective. You can read more about Marathon in the link box above.
