Datamining — AKA, the process of combing through a game's files for early looks at unreleased content present in its code — has become an increasingly popular way for players to leak upcoming additions in advance of their planned release dates. One developer, though, is cracking down hard on this practice for its latest game.That developer is Halo and Destiny creator Bungie, and the game it's aggressively protecting is Marathon, its new sci-fi extraction shooter reboot of its classic '90s-era FPS that's come to Xbox, PC, and PS5. On its launch day last week, the studio took to social media to make it clear to its community that it's planning to enforce a strict no-tolerance policy for publicly sharing unannounced Marathon content."With today's launch of Marathon, we just wanted to give you all a heads-up that our goal is first and foremost to preserve the experience and surprises for all of our players," Bungie wrote. "As such, we will be issuing takedowns for any datamined content that has not yet been revealed to players."Given that developers rarely front warnings like this, this notice was something of a surprise to many. However, Bungie's proactive and strict approach to quelling datamine leaks actually makes a lot of sense when you consider its history with Destiny, and also the structure of Marathon.On top of the fact datamining has been prevalent in the Destiny community for years, Marathon has been designed in such a way that its community is able to slowly unlock secrets and future additions through gameplay achievements and discoveries. The upcoming Cryo Archive map said to feature Destiny raid-like mechanics is an example of this, and will be available once players figure out how to access it.
