Marathon’s second season, NIGHTFALL, kicks off June 2, and Bungie is marking the occasion by opening the extraction shooter up to everyone with a free Open Play Week that runs through June 9. Throwing the doors open at the start of a season is probably what Marathon needs to win some players back, considering the game’s 24-hour Steam peak slid nearly 30 percent inside its first week, as we covered in March.
During the week, anyone can dig into everything the new season has to offer, from the Night Marsh zone to a new Runner shell and fresh gear, and anyone who decides to pick up the game keeps their items and progression once it ends. Players who already own Marathon get the Season 2 content at no additional cost, so the free week is squarely aimed at the newcomers.
The bigger draw for returning players is Sponsored Survival, a new experimental mode running the same June 2 to June 9 window that rethinks how a run plays out. A single crew drops onto Night Marsh as the only players on the map, free to loot and explore without any PvP threat, until backfilled Rooks start filtering in after a set period and things open up. From there it’s anyone’s guess how the run shakes out, whether the Rooks stay lone wolves, team up with each other, or throw in with the crew, and everyone is required to play around a low-stakes Sponsored Kit loadout that keeps the risk down on both sides.
Each match runs on an 18-minute timer, and when it hits zero, the final exfil spawns and everyone races to reach it before time runs out. That’s when the knives come out. You can negotiate a truce and slip out together, or turn on each other in the dark of Night Marsh and gamble that you’re the one who makes it to the ship.
The timing of it all is very interesting for Bungie. Open Play Week wraps on June 9, the very day Bungie ships Destiny 2’s final content update, Monument of Triumph, and steps away from that game. We covered that announcement last month, and Destiny 2 stays playable afterward, but the new content stops as Bungie shifts its focus to what comes next, whether that’s more Marathon, a new franchise, or Destiny 3.
Rounding out the season are the usual extras, including a fresh run of Twitch Drops alongside the week that hands out five rewards for watching anyone streaming in the Marathon category and a sixth for gifting a sub. Players on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and Steam can also grab a platform-specific cosmetic pack, each bundling its own Runner shell style and weapon cosmetics.
