Marathon is off to a good start, offering an intense PvP-focused extraction shooter experience with satisfying gunplay. But there’s one area where live-service games often overdo it: monetization.
On the surface, monetization in Marathon is pretty standard. There’s a store with cosmetic bundles and a rewards pass with free and premium tiers. However, on March 6, multiple Runners on Reddit pointed out that the rewards pass, in particular, is one of the worst values for your money.
One of the main complaints is that it only features one Runner Shell skin, and that’s for Vandal. So if you play any other Shell, there’s no new outfit for you. It does feature 25 weapon skins, which is certainly great, but those often fall behind in interest compared to character skins.
Another issue is that the rewards pass in Marathon doesn’t give any Lux (premium currency) back for leveling it up, unlike multiple other games. Considering Marathon isn’t a free-to-play title and costs $40, paying an additional $10 for every rewards pass with no way of earning the currency for free feels like a little too much.
“This is not a f2p title, so you should offer a Pass which is at least better and not worse. If you want more of our money, you should definitely give us better value, and scrap [these] double items in a paid Battlepass,” a player wrote.
To compare, both ARC Raiders and Helldivers 2 offer battle passes with a similar structure. In both games, a Deck/Warbond offers some premium currency as you level it up alongside multiple character outfits. This is without mentioning that so far, all Decks in ARC Raiders have been free.
On top of that, both titles also allow you to earn the premium currency for free. In Helldivers 2, you can find Super Credits in small quantities in every mission, while ARC Raiders hosts multiple events alongside the already mentioned free Decks.
It’s important to note that while ARC Raiders is generous with its premium currency, Embark Studios adjusted the prices of the store items shortly after launch due to a similar backlash. Bungie might aim to do the same with the Marathon‘s microtransactions based on player feedback.
