Bungie has clarified that it is not merging Destiny and Marathon franchises into a single intellectual property. The confirmation came after a leak shared unverified details about the studio’s plans for Marathon. The extraction shooter, which launched in March, has struggled to retain players. Bungie also announced on Thursday that planned Marathon updates in December and March will be free for existing owners of the game.
Leaks about Marathon’s future reportedly surfaced on 4Chan and were compiled on Reddit this week. Amidst several unverified claims, including one about the PvPvE extraction shooter going free-to-play in December, there was one about Bungie seemingly planning to merge Destiny and Marathon IPs.
Bungie rejected that claim on Wednesday.
“As someone who’s worked on both Destiny and Marathon, I can confirm that the ‘leak’ about us merging the two IPs is fake,” Marathon creative director Julia Nardin said on X. “They share a lot of the same Bungie DNA, but like siblings they’re also their own independent entities. Please don’t believe everything you read online.”
Leak Claims Marathon Will Go Free-to-Play
However, Bungie has not addressed the other big claim about Marathon—which costs $40—switching to a free-to-play model in December. The leak claimed that the move to free-to-play was the reason why the next major Marathon update was delayed. The studio reportedly intends to implement a “much more varied cash shop and better anti cheat” in the game.
Marathon’s next update was set to launch on September 22, but Bungie announced this week that it would be delayed to December 8. The update will include a new Runner shell, a dedicated PvE mode, a refreshed Perimeter zone, a social space/firing range, an experimental Team Deathmatch mode, and improvements to new player onboarding.
On Thursday, Bungie announced that the game’s next two major updates in December 2026 and March 2027 will be free for existing owners. The statement essentially confirms that Marathon will not switch to paid DLC—at least not for the next two major updates.
If you own Marathon, the December and March updates will be available at no additional cost. That includes gameplay content such as new zones, weapons, and Runners.
— Marathon Development Team (@MarathonDevTeam) September 16, 2026
While the Marathon team at Bungie is working on upcoming updates, most of the studio’s Destiny team was laid off by Sony in June. The cuts came after the developer ended work on Destiny 2 after nearly a decade of updates. The game’s final content update, titled Monument of Triumph, was released on June 9.
Development on Marathon, on the other hand, has continued despite the game’s declining player count. On Steam, the extraction shooter has now settled at under 3,000 peak concurrent players. In May, Bungie said it had plans for Marathon story for the “next few years,” suggesting it intended to support the game years after its release.
“We want every season to be a new entry point, and for new players to be able to understand what’s going on regardless of how long we’ve all been running,” Nardin said at the time.
The same month, while discussing Marathon Season 2 content, Bungie said it had plans to evolve the shooter to bring more “mind-bending” sci-fi, reduce the grind and increase rewards, and make the progression system more interesting.
