"Bungie leadership needs to be gutted completely." Former Marathon dev says Bungie "was extremely toxic and humiliating" to work with days after art theft controversy

The upcoming 2025 extraction shooter Marathon has been all over the news recently, and not for many good reasons. Though its official gameplay reveal in April was received decently, it and its developer — Destiny 2 creator Bungie — have since been marred in multiple controversies. Now, a former developer has spoken out against what they feel is troublesome leadership at the studio.

The comments came from a BlueSky user named Spirited who formerly worked at Bungie on both Destiny 2 and Marathon as an online services engineer.

“As a former Bungie employee who worked on Marathon, I feel for those still at the studio," they wrote in a now-deleted post. "Working with engineering / Marathon leadership was extremely toxic and humiliating. I won’t speak about the rest, but Bungie leadership needs to be gutted completely."

Spirited also commented (this post has also been deleted) on the developer's leadership last year after Bungie cut 220 employees: "Every day was a fight for autonomy and trust. Every day was someone telling me I’m not allowed to speak on any issue or problem in a professional tone. Every day was someone telling me my industry experience didn’t matter and that some failed CEO knows best as our subarea lead."

It's a scathing sentiment that comes just days after Bungie found itself in the middle of an art theft scandal in which the developer admitted a former employee stole and used artwork from an artist's 2017 poster designs while developing Marathon. The company said in a response that it was "committed to do right by the artist" and that it had reached out, though similar controversies have now happened four times since 2021.

Over this past weekend, Forbes' Paul Tassi also reported that morale at Bungie is in "free-fall," and that "the vibes have never been worse." Employees throughout the studio are fearing what might happen to Bungie if Marathon fails to perform well commercially, all while the developer has had to scrap its plan to launch preorders this summer and is considering a "roadmap of public playtests" instead of a full Open Beta in August ahead of the scheduled September 23, 2025 release date.

All of this bad news follows a disappointing series of Closed Alpha gameplay tests that ran through late April to early May, with most of the feedback from players either lukewarm or fairly negative outright. Notably, Forbes' report indicates that Bungie leadership often ignored warnings from developers about what would and wouldn't be good for Marathon, with the need for a strong PvE element mentioned specifically.

The writing is on the wall for Marathon

If one thing's been made clear to me after all of what's happened within Bungie in the last few years, it's that the developer's leadership needs a big shake-up. From multiple waves of layoffs to repeated instances of art malpractice to reports of executives ignoring the expertise of developers across several departments, there are clearly deep-rooted issues stemming from the top that have hamstrung the studio's efforts and eroded its reputation.

I suspect Sony PlayStation — the company that acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion — will step in to take more direct control of the company in the near future. Regardless of whatever the result of such a move is, though, it's hard for me to imagine a future in which Marathon is as successful as Bungie needs it to be.

It's been said by sources at Bungie that Marathon will need to be in Circana's Top 5 games of 2025 in terms of sales for it to be a success, and frankly, after everything that's happened and how negative the overall reception to the game has been thus far, that seems like an impossibility. It's in a concerning position where it needs to sell extremely well for Bungie's health as a developer, but has been poorly received compared to direct competition like ARC Raiders — another $40 extraction shooter on the way that completely stole what little thunder Marathon had.

A delay beyond the September 23 release date is all-but-assured at this point, but even that may not be enough to right the ship. And if it's not, and Marathon ends up being a flop? I'm afraid we'll see further devastating layoffs at the studio, along with a downscale of its operations within Sony. I'm hoping for the best, but...it's hard to argue that the writing isn't on the wall.