Marathon is Missing One Extraction Shooter Feature Due to Toxicity

Summary

Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, won’t have proximity chat due to concerns over potential toxicity.
The game director, Joe Ziegler, emphasized that creating a safe environment for players is a top priority for Bungie.
Despite the decision, Bungie isn’t ruling out the possibility of adding proximity chat in the future with a solution for toxicity.

According to Marathon‘s game director, the upcoming Bungie extraction shooter won’t have proximity chat for players due to the potential for toxicity. It’s been a long road for Bungie’s revival of the Marathon franchise, with the newest game seemingly going through plenty of bumps during development. However, the light is now at the end of the tunnel with Marathon finally approaching its launch.

April 11 was a major milestone for Bungie as the company finally gave players tons of new information about Marathon, including showing off new trailers and gameplay. It’s been a long road for Marathon, but with a September 23 release date, launch is finally in sight. After announcing six starting classes for launch with 3 maps, Bungie is gearing up for months of new announcements and reveals, though one game feature confirmation may leave potential players divided.

You Will Have the Chance to Play Bungie’s Marathon Game This Month

Some lucky fans will be able to play Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon way early, courtesy of a newly announced playtest that’s fast approaching.

During an interview with PC Gamer following the reveal, Marathon game director Joe Ziegler confirmed that Bungie is still trying to find a solution to potential toxicity and won’t have a proximity chat feature. Ziegler admitted the difficulties of moderating player toxicity and that he doesn’t think “anyone really has a good solution to that just yet.” Proximity chat is a common feature for games like Fortnite, allowing players to communicate with one another when close by, but the trade-off is that players can’t control what they hear from others, whether it be good-natured or otherwise.

Marathon Won’t Have Proximity Chat Feature Initially

Ziegler did confirm that Bungie isn’t against the experience of proximity chat, though the studio hasn’t found a solution to combating toxicity just yet. So, while it’s possible the feature does get added down the road, potentially sooner if players become vocal enough once Marathon launches in September, Bungie doesn’t seem to be willing to add it just for the sake of adding it until it comes up with a viable solution for creating a safe environment for all players.

“I don’t think anyone really has a good solution to that just yet. Because we’re so dedicated to making sure that we’re creating a safe space where we don’t have players just flaming each other or doing terrible things to one another, I think we’re not ready to invest in prox chat until we have a solution.”

While Bungie isn’t closing the door entirely on eventually adding a proximity chat-like feature once it figures out a solution to the toxicity issue, the news still appears to be mixed with the community. Other extraction shooters have seemingly worked around toxicity by adding in the ability to manually turn off the feature entirely, allowing players to engage with it only if they want. It’s clear that proximity chat in games like Hunt Showdown, Call of Duty: Warzone, and DayZ enhances the shooter experience for many, so there’s hope from fans that Bungie will eventually be able to implement some form for Marathon.