"This seems a bit meaner than it was intended": Slay the Spire 2 lead backtracks on Marathon "small indie passion projects" joke as the roguelike unexpectedly dominates Steam

Yesterday was a huge day for game releases between Bungie's Marathon and Mega Crit's early access release of Slay the Spire 2, leading to a real David and Goliath moment, but who's who in this scenario is now up for debate as the indie roguelike absolutely dominates Steam and causes the devs to backtrack on a joke aimed at the new extraction shooter.

"Congratulations to the Marathon team on their launch! Don't let small indie passion projects like this pass you by just because Slay the Spire 2 is out," Mega Crit cheekily wrote on social media when both games dropped within just a few hours of each other. Obvious friendly sarcasm there – Bungie's one of the longest-standing AAA institutions in the biz.

What the roguelike studio couldn't have anticipated, though, is that Slay the Spire 2's concurrent player numbers on Steam would soon rocket to a whopping 314,000 peak before it even hit its first full weekend, compared to Marathon's still-impressive peak of 88,000 players logged in at the same time.

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Mega Crit has quickly backtracked, since what started as a fairly innocent, self-deprecating quip could be interpreted as the devs 'punching down' at a game that's not quite as popular. "It wasn't supposed to be shade, we were being sarcastic," the studio clarifies, adding it "did not know we'd blow up quite to the degree that we did…"

Slay the Spire 2's lead developer Casey Yano chimes in as well. "This seems a bit meaner than it was intended," he writes on social media. "To be fair I didn't think we'd actually pass Marathon in concurrent users."

Regardless of comparisons, it's nice to see two very different games enjoy positive launches. Slay the Spire 2 has hit the biggest ever concurrent player peak for a roguelike in Steam history. On the other hand, Marathon has come out of its turbulent development cycle to a really good response from fans who gave it a 91% 'Very Positive' Steam rating out of the gate.

Slay the Spire 2 devs want you to "break the game" as that's "part of the fun" of deckbuilders – and if something's busted, they can do one of their favorite things: "Nerf cards."