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"Inevitable" Does Not Mean "Moral".

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This is the second blog post I’ve written today. The first was an economic breakdown of GTA VI’s pricing, but by the time I finished it, news broke of major layoffs at Bungie. In light of that, it felt inappropriate to publish a detached economic analysis of the games industry without acknowledging what that economy produces on the ground. This morning, Hermen Hulst published an internal memo detailing a wide scale layoff across Bungie, which includes most of the D2 team and even parts of the Marathon Development team, this affected full time employees as well as contractors. For a studio that just yesterday was operating with 850 employees, it would seem now that they’ve been left with around 400, give or take. This is a collapse in real human terms. The consequences of years of mismanagement, combined with increasing pressure across the industry to deliver immediate returns on long-term investments, are now materializing in full force. A $3.6 billion acquisition is not something that...
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The Cord: Marathon Season 2.5

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Well, well, well… What do we have here? In a surprise Tuesday update from the Marathon Dev Team, we’ve just gotten a roadmap for the rest of Season 2: Nightfall. We now know that Season 2 will end on September 22nd, meaning that Season 2 will last for 15 total weeks, 3 weeks longer than Season 1 did. One has to wonder whether this decision was always intended or whether it was deliberately delayed to give Nightfall more room to breathe following its rocky launch. However, it seems that we’ve had more options added to the menu that may point towards why Season 2 was actually extended. Midseason starts on July 21st, and with it, an unprecedented slew of content, chief among these additions will be “Vault Breaker” the long teased “PvE mode”. Before we dive into Vault Breakers and what that’ll have to offer for dedicated players and those who are more on the fence, we will briefly cover the second major upgrade: Cradle Evolution. Season 2 introduced The Cradle, a skill-tree-esque menu that...
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Changing Tunes

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It feels as though the wind behind Marathon’s sails have shifted a bit this weekend, and while many might immediately jump to point out the obvious resurgence of Destiny 2’s player count, that’s not exactly what I’m talking about, though I’d be remiss to not entertain the idea that these two things are intrinsically intertwined. Over the past weekend I’ve seen the tune change, a handful of once staunch and dedicated players have revised their original sentiments to suggest that the game was never good, that they’d been lying to themselves, caught up in the hype, or any number and combination of reasons that they simply do not enjoy the game anymore. While it’s one thing to fall out of love with anything, it’s another thing to attempt to retroactively change your prior opinion on it. While this isn’t particularly widespread, it is a bit of an “I’d only have two quarters, but it’s weird that it happened twice” type of situation. Far be it from me to specifically indict people on somethin...
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Armageddon, As Expected

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  I find myself decreasingly motivated to write these days, and it's not for lack of drive. If anything, it's because I'm increasingly unwilling to digest the subject matter. The reaper has come to collect, and the gaming industry is being marched toward its grave. The one thing we can say is that none of this is surprising. A few years ago, prominent industry insiders were already warning about the inevitable consequences of the COVID-era hiring spree and the unchecked growth that followed. If you want to go back about two centuries, there were entire schools of economic thought built around the idea that industries eventually collapse under the weight of their own excesses. I'm not particularly interested in turning this into a philosophical debate about economic systems, especially given how quickly those conversations derail into violent radioactivity online. What matters is that we knew this was coming. We knew the correction would be agonizing. I don't think e...
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The Cord: So... What's Everyone Doing Tonight?

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I really, really, really didn’t want to write this. I told glockceti and goosewasinuse as much about 30 minutes ago, and even now I’m staring at this draft wondering how the hell things spiraled this badly. What. The Fuck. Happened? I got off work at 3PM EST after spending nearly two hours watching NuAngelics and MallowTheQueen desperately attempt to complete a single run, or simply get into the servers at all. I went on a quick coffee run with Mrs. Zaws, got home around 4:30PM EST, watched the State of Play (which was solid but ultimately kneecapped by Sony spending the last week pretending it was the second coming), then walked my dog and showered. By the time 7PM EST rolled around, all I wanted to do was sit down, boot up Marathon, and finally experience the launch of Season 2. Instead, the game effectively ceased to exist. At almost exactly 7PM EST, the developers announced they were pulling the servers offline to deal with what can only be described as a catastrophic launch. P...
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The Cord: Marathon Season 2 Launches Today

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Good morning. It is Marathon Season 2 Day. After weeks of teasers, developer insights, and community speculation that ramped up considerably over the last week specifically, Marathon Season 2: Nightfall launches today, at 1PM EST. The update brings a fresh progression system, a new Runner shell, new weapons, a free access week (which also starts today, at 3PM EST, and runs to the 9th of June), and perhaps most importantly, Bungie’s first major attempt at addressing many of the complaints that surfaced during Season 1. For a game that spent much of its first season fighting an uphill battle against public sentiment, Nightfall feels less like a standard seasonal refresh and more like a statement of intent for the studio and the players who remain committed to the project. The main attraction is Night Marsh, a nighttime variant of Dire Marsh that fundamentally changes how players approach the map. "Dire Marsh, but dark" is what many shitposters (yes, all of you, including you Ta...
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The Cord: Season 2 Dark 2 Furious

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It’s interesting that no matter how many of Season 2’s features and additions were predicted weeks, if not months ago, the full reveal still managed to smack the community upside the head. Martoners, we are officially one week away from the release of Marathon Season 2: Nightfall. Headlining the update is Night Marsh, a night-time variant of Dire Marsh that appears to lean fully into Marathon’s survival-horror sensibilities, alongside the Cradle, a complete overhaul to shell progression and buildcrafting. Joining them are two new weapons in the KKV SMG and D54 Pistol, the long-awaited Sentinel shell, and yes, somehow most shocking of all: Zombies… at least I think that’s what they are. We’ll start with Night Marsh, which many feared would simply amount to “Dire Marsh if someone turned the lights off,” and what Marathon’s harshest critics still insist it is. In reality, the map appears to fundamentally alter the sandbox itself, introducing LIDAR tools for navigation in complete darkness...
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