Pre-ordering Marathon will net you a selection of digital goodies, but Destiny 2 isn't among them. Or it's not meant to be, at least. For a brief period, however, putting down your money on Bungie's new extraction shooter would cause the studio's previous sci-fi FPS to start making its way onto your hard-drive.
The bizarre – and quite hilarious – glitch has since been rectified. "We've resolved an issue where Destiny 2 would begin installing after pre-ordering Marathon on Steam," the official Marathon account writes on Twitter.
The second Destiny is free-to-play, making this just a crossed wire within the bowels of Steam, and ensuring no transactions were impacted by the mix-up. I'd love to know how and why it happened; crossover rewards between the two properties seems the most reasonable explanation. To take full advantage of them, you need a Bungie account that's already tied to Destiny 2.
We've resolved an issue where Destiny 2 would begin installing after pre-ordering Marathon on Steam. We have also resolved an issue where Collector's Edition owners would receive an error when attempting to activate their game code on Steam.January 20, 2026
Being honest, I would probably have just accepted this if it happened to me. There are worse distractions. Fans are taking it in stride. "Reads like something out of The Onion," says one response, with another adding: "Woah woah woah... That's a feature. Give 'em Destiny 2."
A second, more egregious glitch was fixed too, impacting people looking for one of the enhanced packages. "We have also resolved an issue where Collector's Edition owners would receive an error when attempting to activate their game code on Steam," reads the same tweet.
All seems to be well now for players to prepare to finally get a proper go at Bungie's first new game in almost nine years, and the first installment in the Marathon series in 30. Moving away from the RPG-lite ideas of Destiny 2, Marathon is about finding loot and taking out your competition.
It's set way off in the future, where teams of cybernetic runners vie for the limited resources on a colorful wasteland. After over a decade of Destiny, I'm excited to jump into a Bungie shoot-'em-up with less lore and baggage, even if the company's apparently determined for us to remember the Guardians.
