Summary
According to a reliableBungiereporter,Marathon’s NDA was removed from the Closed Alpha because “leadership was nervous” following mixed responses to the gameplay reveal.
AlthoughDestiny 2has mostly been going strong since it first launched, it’s fair to say that things haveslowed down a fair bit since its last expansion, The Final Shape. With that in mind, everyone’s been excited (and a little anxious) to see what the team might do next with Marathon,which was revealed last year as a reboot of the original game.
Hopes were high for Marathon leading up to its gameplay reveal last week, but the responses have ended up being a little mixed overall. Bungie fans have taken issue with a number of things,from the game not being free-to-play to its extraction shooter focus. The reaction wasn’t helped when details of the surprisingly restrictive Closed Alpha were shared.
Bungie Reportedly Changed Marathon’s Alpha Due To Being “Nervous”
It Seems The NDA Wasn’t That Serious Anyway
For whatever reason, Bungie initially decided that Marathon’s Closed Alpha would require an NDA to sign, restricting players from sharing their thoughts on the game without just leaking it.That’s since been changed, and the NDA from the test has been removed, which is reportedly due to the mixed responses to the gameplay reveal.
Over on Forbes, the confusing setup for the Marathon Closed Alpha, which is acting as a technical test for the game ahead of launch, was explained. According to them, the NDA was put on the game because Bungie was worried about leaks, although they were never going to take it seriously enough to sue anyone.
Despite the NDA not really being a big deal, it was reportedly changed because “leadership was nervous” after the mixed responses to the reveal. Bungie thought that lifting the NDA would change the perception of Marathon,which Forbes says seems to be the case so farsince so many codes are already being sent out.
An Open Beta for Marathon will reportedly happen close to launch, likely at some point in August when pre-orders for the game go live.
The final thing that Forbes reports is that Marathon is going to cost $40, the same price as both Helldivers 2 (a big success) and Concord (a big disaster). Bungie apparently isn’t going to shift on the price point so late into development,although it’s surely aware of the backlash that the decision has received.
