From yesterday, Marathon‘s new Vault Breaker PvE mode opened up for players to explore. It’ll be online until August 4, allowing Bungie to flesh out the experiment, gather data, and move forward with whatever comes next. This is something of a test for the extraction shooter, and it has already proven to be a productive one.
On Steam, the game’s peak player count tripled within a day as Vault Breaker went live on the platform. It also helps that players have banded together to stage a ‘Revival Week’ for the game, a social effort that was coincidentally timed with the arrival of Vault Breaker.
Marathon Might Be Saved (Temporarily) by PvE
It’s another feather in the cap of player-vs-environment gaming, furthering the argument that it’s almost a necessary inclusion in the extraction world.
Last week, I penned a feature exploring the existence of PvE-based options in extraction shooters, because it’s way more common than you’d think. In fact, only ARC Raiders is the sole major extraction game that doesn’t have PvE content these days.
That’s why Marathon saw a spike in players when Vault Breaker arrived on July 21, bringing a PvE experience to one and all.
On July 20, the game’s peak player count on Steam hit 5,200 users. On July 21, when Vault Breaker dropped, the peak player count jumped to just shy of 15,000. That’s a considerable leap, and it’s the single biggest jump we’ve seen in the Marathon space since the game’s second season landed on June 2.
However, the expectation is that players are getting back into Marathon to sample Vault Breaker, and once they’re done, they’ll take off once again, causing the player count to plummet.
Did you get back into Marathon to experience the PvE update? Let us know what you think about it on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
I’m not buying until they commit to making PvE permanent. PvP extraction shooters will always sputter out as the hard core players rush to end game loot and then begin hunting other players that don’t have the time to rush to end game gear. PvE give the rest of us a fun way to complete quests and see the story without the annoyance of people specifically playing to screw over other players. I know that I prefer a battlefield or COD game for PvP over extraction shooters. Even Fortnight has more enjoyable PvP than after the first couple weeks of a PvP extraction shooter.
For a whole day, now it’s back under 10k