A new game director has been appointed for Marathon, Bungie's reboot of the classic Macintosh shooter series, IGN reports, adding that after serving as game director of Valorant at Riot, 2022 Bungie hired Joe Ziegler to replace former Marathon game director Chris Barrett, best known for Destiny 2's critically acclaimed Forsaken expansion. Barrett's bio at X has been updated as follows: "Executive Creative Director @Bungie" Ziegler also confirmed his new role as Marathon game director on "X" and said he has been working on the game for the past nine months." We are still baking, but are excited to share more information about the game as we get closer to the day we can deliver it to you," Ziegler wrote.In an email sent to PC Gamer, a Bungie representative continued that work on Marathon separately confirmed that.

The shakeup of Marathon's leadership team is a new addition to the ongoing turmoil at Bungie, which has endured a series of reorganizations, layoffs, delays, and senior executive departures since it was acquired by Sony in 2022 and the poorly received Destiny 2: Lightfall expansion. The October 2023 layoffs cut 100 employees, including composers and longtime Bungie veterans Michael Salvatori and Michael Sechrist. Along with the layoffs, Bungie announced that Destiny 2's next expansion, The Final Shape, would be delayed until June 2024, while simultaneously announcing a follow-up that Destiny 2's revenue was 45% below projections. More recently, Joe Blackburn, Destiny 2's game director since 2020, left the company in January 2024; IGN's impression from Bungie sources is that morale at the studio is bleak, and that staff will be laid off after The Final Shape's release. The company is growing concerned that another wave of layoffs may be on the way. These rumors echo ongoing concerns that Sony might buy the studio outright, and just last month, PlayStation chairman Hiroki Toki said he wanted to see Bungie improve its "handling of business expenses and accountability for development schedules." IGN also reports that Marathon is undergoing a change in direction coinciding with the change in leadership, with sources saying that the game will now feature a roster of hero characters instead of customizable, player-specific characters. This change is a significant departure from the focus on player identity that Marathon developers emphasized in a short documentary video released at the time of the game's launch in 2023, as Bungie's performance has clearly been under considerable scrutiny from Sony management, and the company's management has been working to ensure that the game's new identity will be more consistent with Sony's own, Marathon's long-term fate feels precarious--certainly unfortunate for a game that ranked 10th on our "most wanted" list last year.