Marathon Season 2 launch crippled by server outages on its biggest day

Bungie dropped Marathon Season 2 on June 2 — the game's biggest update since launch — and the servers promptly fell apart, leaving most players locked out for the better part of the day. The timing couldn't have been worse: the first week is free to play, and Sony's PlayStation State of Play showcase aired the same day, putting Marathon in front of hundreds of thousands of potential new players.

Season 2 brings an overhauled progression system, a new character type, a new nighttime map, and a survival horror-flavored game mode. Within hours of maintenance ending, Bungie was already flagging a surge of Weasel and Anteater error codes. The studio handed out free loot packs as a goodwill gesture, but by around 7:00 p.m. ET the servers were pulled offline entirely for emergency fixes. At roughly 9:00 p.m. ET — when servers were originally supposed to come back — Bungie posted: "We need additional time to complete Marathon maintenance and deploy the patch. We appreciate your patience and will provide additional updates when they are ready." A resolution timeline wasn't clear at time of writing.

Twitch streamer Knitehawk summed up the frustration: "It sucks how good the new season felt within those couple matches I got to play. Hopefully the next update fixes everything and we can really see what the team cooked up." The stakes are high: Destiny 2 has been sunset, significant layoffs are reportedly coming to Bungie in the months ahead, and Marathon needs every win it can get.

If Season 2's content is as strong as early impressions suggest, the rocky launch might not leave a lasting mark. But a free week combined with a State of Play spotlight is a rare alignment — and Bungie spent most of it with the lights off.