Bungie, to its credit, has been very quick to react to player feedback even before Marathon launched, making changes in the Server Slam while also making players away that it was monitoring the elements the team heard about the most. The game's first significant patch arrived just a few days ago from the time of this writing, and made some incredibly significant, positive changes that players asked for, but it also made one that no one wanted, and that is thankfully already getting rolled back.
That change was a small line in the patch notes that read "Increased the range gunfire and explosions can be heard from." It seems like a small update, but it's impact has been huge. Players on online began complaining about how a single shot fired seems to attract every team on the map, shifting the balance of Marathon's tense exploratory moments and chaotic, PvPvE combat to every team getting into fights within the first few minutes and your squad either being the lucky ones left standing or sent back to the lobby before you got the chance to get your feet wet.
That's part of the experience I also had in my previous nightly Marathon session, sometimes being part of the lucky squad, but more often not, because winning the first fight just meant you attracted a second, and a third. Well, thankfully, Bungie's reactiveness to player feedback continues regarding this change, and the studio has already confirmed it'll be walked back.
"We recognize that this was an overcorrection and will pull things back in a way that maintains your ability to hear each other's actions, but not at a distance that feels excessive," Bungie wrote in a post on the Marathon Development Team X (formerly Twitter) account. "We're still aligning on how to ensure the best player experience, and will deploy changes in an upcoming update."
Game director Joe Ziegler also chimed in with a post on his personal account, adding a little more context to why the change was made in the first place, saying, "we originally wanted to give everyone more info in the map and make it easier to make choices around audio: where people are, what's happening on the map, whether to run towards or away from danger, but we're hearing we overdid it a bit and looking to pull back the range in an upcoming patch."
"This change should still give some of that benefit but at a distance that feels more comfortable and intuitive to everyone." Ziegler also added that players should "keep the feedback coming" and that the studio has "a big list" of issues it is hearing feedback on and keeping track of.
Chase Combs, the audio director on Marathon, also chimed in with perhaps the most important piece of context (that is really just a less-serious way of reiterating Ziegler's comments):
Marathon has been out for a little more than a week at the time of this writing. For more on the new extraction shooter, you can check out my review-in-progress, which will be updated with a score once Bungie releases the Cryo Archive-endgame area, and I've had the chance to spend some time with it. For now, you can see my thoughts after well over 30 hours with the game.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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