Since coming out late October last year, Arc Raiders has been the current hotness in terms of multiplayer shooters. Just recently, it got some extraction-based competition in Marathon, Bungie's new futuristic FPS. Though they share similarities, an exec at Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios believes there's room for both, and he admires the design approach.
"I feel like the game is more PvP prone. PvE doesn't feel like the focus of that game," Patrick Söderlund, CEO and founder of Embark, tells GamesIndustry.biz. "But there are a lot of things in there that I actually like that they've done well. I like that what I do in the game is linked to my progression. There are many things in there that I actually think they've done a good job with."
Having only played a few hours of Marathon, I'd be inclined to agree. It has that satisfying Bungie flow of shifting around the map taking on opponents, with loot and some in-map enemies for good measure, whereas Arc Raiders emphasizes the latter more.
He mentions the Marathon technical test from April 2025, wherein the project took some licks from players on a number of fronts. This feedback contributed to a delay, before the game was tinkered with and turned into the sleek run'n'gun we know now.
Söderlund fully respects the graft. "it looks like the team has done a really good job of turning what was a big problem around in a very short period of time," he says. "That's unusual. So credit to that team and to the work that they have done with the game."
He finishes by saying, "I hope they do well." It's a harsh landscape for live-service games at the moment, as Highguard went from closing The Game Awards to shutting down in mere months. But regardless of how Marathon does, it's good to see devs respect each other's work, rather than viewing it all as competition.
