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Now that the Marathon server slam has let everyone try out a big, free chunk of Bungie's sci-fi extraction shooter, the game's risen to third on the top 10 best-selling games on Steam, at least at the time of writing, which is a pretty good sign.
Marathon had already started to climb the Steam sales charts as its March 5 release date approached and marketing ramped up, so the fact that it's not only holding, but also gaining ground on the top 10 – earlier, it was sitting at fourth, though these rankings fluctuate a lot – suggests a lot of people enjoyed what they played.
Currently, Marathon is only behind Resident Evil Requiem for new games on Steam's top 10. The evergreen top dog is Counter-Strike 2, the monetization of which is heavily mentioned in a New York lawsuit accusing Valve of overseeing a digital gambling market.
Our Resident Evil Requiem review calls it one of the best slices of survival horror in years, and it's swiftly become the starting shot for a stacked March, so it's pretty strong competition.
Marathon is still in the pre-order phase, and we're only looking at data for one storefront, so these sales are a soft science. But Marathon has also notably jumped at least 10 ranks on global Steam wishlists in the past few weeks, currently settling at 32. For comparison, fellow March releases Slay the Spire 2 and Crimson Desert are respectively sitting at ranks 4 and 6 on the wishlist charts. Close behind Marathon is Everwind, a Skyrim-meets-Minecraft survival sandbox game also due this month.
The takeaway for me, as someone who hit a wall with the server slam UI and ultimately wanted to want to play more, is that it looks like Marathon's server slam was a net positive, which is about all you can ask for with a divisive genre like this. Despite some issues, Marathon's got magnetism, and attracting early devotees is half the battle with any live service game.
