Overwatch senior dev says using Steam player counts to dunk on multi-platform releases like Marathon is "big unemployed, maidenless behavior"

As Marathon's Steam player count comes under close scrutiny from onlookers, various industry figures have come out to say that you really don't have to read into it that closely at all.

Over the past few years, a popular part of discussing games has been keeping tabs on what sites like SteamDB report for their concurrent player counts. Obviously, websites like these can be useful. Slay the Spire 2 made Steam's top 20, whereas Resident Evil Requiem hit a series best regarding Steam concurrent players. Signs that something is working out for both games.

That said, it's one part of the grander picture, and not the whole thing. For one thing, games release on other PC storefronts and consoles. Also, some behaviour is more normal than some might think. A story-focused RPG is going to shrink in active players as everyone completes everything there is to do, and that's fine, as you're likely more interested in copies sold.

The latest game to attract such attention is, as you've probably guessed, Marathon. It's a new FPS from the studio behind Halo, it's releasing months after fellow extraction shooter Arc Raiders, and has, from the outside, had a rocky development. Plenty to be interested in.

As spotted by PC Gamer, though, some industry figures working on the likes of Overwatch and Warframe have been quick to shoot down concerns over how many people are playing Marathon now compared to launch or even the server slam weekend only recently.

Reacting to a post that Marathon has lost 50% of its players when all it had to compete with was Pokemon Pokopia and Slay the Spire 2, Overwatch senior designer Dylan Snyder says, "Is the 50% player drop in the room with us right now? Feel free to dislike and pass up any game you want, more power to you, but this is big unemployed, maidenless behavior."

In reply to someone else on Twitter, Snyder adds, "as someone who knows actual Overwatch player numbers, I tend to just laugh about SteamDB being used as a mic drop."

I imagine Snyder is alluding to the fact that you can play Overwatch almost anywhere – so while a good Steam player count is probably nice to see, it's good to remember that most players are likely on BattleNet or PlayStation, and so on.

Snyder isn't the only one to comment, either. Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford ended up giving her own take after one commenter made a comparison between Marathon and the free-to-play online game.

"When Warframe released we had 435 other titles compete with for the attention of millions of Steam users," she says. "Now games have 20,014 other games in the same year for many millions of Steam users that have already been exposed to 80,000+ prior releases they might have liked.

"We got incredibly lucky. We were broke. There were less than 500 other games released the year Warframe released. Every day people care about Warframe is a gift and we're only as good as our last update."

All of that is to say, game development isn't getting any easier, and only time will tell how Marathon holds up. Sony doesn't have the best track record with live service games, though Bungie's latest has earned plenty of praise already, and Steam is only one place someone might choose to play.

Bungie doesn't want Marathon to repeat Destiny 2's vaulting controversy: "It doesn't matter when you join, you'll still be able to play through the established questlines."