Marathon: the beta suffers connection issues and players can’t get in

The free trial of Bungie's shooter suffers drops after an avalanche of users.

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The launch of Marathon’s Server Slam (which we’ve been talking about for days) hasn’t gone unnoticed. The open testing phase of Bungie’s new extraction shooter has generated so much interest that the servers were saturated just hours after going live.

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Although not all players are experiencing issues, a significant part of the community has reported connection errors and a red screen that prevents access to matches. Others, on the other hand, have been able to play normally, which suggests a punctual overload due to the high number of simultaneous users.

Servers saturated in Marathon’s beta before launch

Everything indicates that the problem is related to the massive influx of players trying to test the title at the same time. Bungie hasn’t released a specific figure, but the situation reflects the strong interest the project has generated in this pre-launch phase or that the servers weren’t prepared for such stress all at once.

It’s expected that the studio will gradually increase the server capacity to stabilize access in the coming hours. In the meantime, the test will remain active for several days and will allow players to unlock rewards that will be transferred to the full game.

The official launch of Marathon is scheduled for March 5, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series. If the start of the Server Slam is any indication, the final launch could kick off with a community more than ready to take action, we’ll see what happens in the end.