Slay the Spire 2, Marathon, and the Challenge of Sharing the Spotlight

Slay the Spire 2 has exploded out of early access with the kind of instant momentum most studios only dream about, quickly climbing the Steam charts and drawing huge concurrent player numbers. On the very same day, Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon launched to a far chillier reception and a much smaller audience than many expected from the studio behind Halo and Destiny.

Somewhere between those two extremes, a joking comment about “small indie passion projects” and supporting other releases on launch day landed very differently than intended. As Slay the Spire 2 became an overnight phenomenon, the quip suddenly looked less like a light‑hearted nudge and more like a punchline at Marathon’s expense, prompting a public walk‑back and a broader conversation about how crowded launches, player attention, and online humor collide.

From Cult Favorite to Instant Steam Dominance

The first Slay the Spire built its reputation slowly. Starting in early access in 2017, it quietly grew by word of mouth, eventually becoming one of the defining deckbuilding roguelikes on PC and consoles. Its success helped push the roguelike and deckbuilder hybrid genre into the mainstream and inspired countless imitators.

Slay the Spire 2, by contrast, skipped the slow burn. It arrived on Steam early access with an existing fan base, a clear identity, and years of positive sentiment behind it. Within hours, it sat atop the popular charts and drew tens of thousands of simultaneous players, outpacing many big‑budget releases.

Several factors helped set up this moment:

• Strong brand loyalty: The original game maintained a large active community on Steam and across streaming platforms, primed to jump into a sequel.
• Early access familiarity: Players already understood the early access model from the first game, making them more comfortable buying early.
• Modest hardware demands: Like many 2D or low‑spec titles, Slay the Spire 2 runs on a wide range of PCs, lowering the barrier to entry compared with graphically intensive shooters.
• Streaming‑friendly gameplay: Roguelike runs, decision‑heavy combat, and build experimentation are natural content for Twitch and YouTube.

Steam’s design amplifies these advantages. The platform’s discovery feeds, charts, and review systems often reward games that quickly rack up positive reviews and high concurrence, creating a feedback loop where attention breeds more attention. Valve itself has outlined how visibility is influenced by player engagement and review volume in its own discussions about the Steam store and recommendation systems.¹

Marathon’s Tough Launch in the Same Window

While Slay the Spire 2 was thriving, Bungie’s Marathon was struggling to secure the audience many expected. The studio is best known for Halo and the live‑service hit Destiny 2, but Marathon entered a highly competitive space: extraction shooters and PvP‑heavy live service games. To succeed there, a game needs:

• Strong initial concurrency to populate matches
• Retention over multiple weeks
• A compelling long‑term progression or seasonal roadmap

For any live service shooter, early adoption is everything. Industry data shows that the top‑grossing and most‑played online titles tend to cluster around a relatively small number of persistent hits, leaving new entrants to fight for a slice of remaining player time.² When a game opens weaker than expected, perception can quickly turn negative, and that perception itself can further depress adoption.

Marathon’s launch coinciding with Slay the Spire 2’s unexpected dominance produced an awkward juxtaposition: a comparatively modest, almost niche‑looking shooter debut and a 2D roguelike sequel rocketing up the charts.

“Small Indie Passion Projects” and a Joke That Overshot

On social media, a member of the Slay the Spire 2 team posted a tongue‑in‑cheek message encouraging players not to ignore “small indie passion projects” like Marathon while being excited for the card battler’s launch. The joke hinged on the obvious contrast: Marathon is anything but a tiny indie endeavor. It’s backed by a major AAA studio with a long history and significant resources.

When the post was written, the tone was clearly playful—punching up at a huge developer, not down at a struggling peer. But as data from services like SteamDB and public concurrent counts began to circulate, it became clear that Slay the Spire 2 was substantially outperforming Marathon on Steam in terms of player numbers. What was meant as a harmless jab at a giant suddenly read like a victory lap at another game’s expense.

The developer quickly followed up, clarifying that the comment had been intended in good fun and acknowledging that, in light of actual launch performance, it came across as harsher than intended. That walk‑back landed well with many players, but the episode highlighted how fragile the line can be between community banter and perceived gloating, especially when numbers and charts are involved.

Why Launch Timing and Platform Context Matter

On paper, Slay the Spire 2 and Marathon appeal to very different audiences: one is a turn‑based deckbuilder with roguelike structure, the other a PvP‑focused extraction shooter. In practice, they still compete on a crucial axis: player time and attention during a crowded release window.

Steam’s Visibility and the Early Access Advantage

Steam tends to reward games that:

• Generate lots of wishlists in advance
• Convert those wishlists to sales quickly at release
• Maintain healthy concurrent player numbers and positive user reviews

Valve has described how its algorithms consider metrics like recent sales, playtime, and review scores when determining which games to surface on the front page or in recommendation carousels.¹ Early access games with established brands can get a significant head start here, as fans who loved the first game are more likely to wishlist and purchase the sequel on day one.

By contrast, live service shooters like Marathon often depend heavily on:

• Marketing campaigns outside of Steam (trailers, showcases, social media)
• Console player bases and cross‑platform ecosystems
• Long‑term content plans rather than immediate early access buzz

If a title like Marathon is also available on console platforms, Steam’s numbers give only a partial picture of its total player base. Sony, for instance, reported hundreds of millions of monthly active users across PlayStation Network in recent financial filings, highlighting how large the console audience can be relative to PC for some games.³ That said, in the PC gaming conversation, Steam charts often shape the narrative, even when they don’t tell the whole story.

How Genres Shape Player Expectations

Roguelikes and extraction shooters fit into players’ lives differently. The distinction becomes crucial when they launch side by side.

For many players, a single‑purchase roguelike feels like a safer impulse buy, especially if they already loved the first game. Extraction shooters and live service titles, by contrast, require not just money but ongoing time investment, a stable playerbase, and confidence in future support. That higher perceived commitment can make adoption more fragile at launch.

When Good News for One Game Feels Like Bad News for Another

The online reaction to Slay the Spire 2 and Marathon’s overlapping launches illustrates a familiar dynamic in gaming discourse: community excitement for one project can easily morph into dunking on another, even when the studios themselves are trying to avoid that framing.

The Social Media Amplifier

Developer comments now travel faster and reach more people than ever. A single light joke, quote‑tweeted and memed in the right context, can be interpreted as:

• Friendly banter between devs and communities
• Evidence of bad blood
• Corporate arrogance or insensitivity

Because player counts and charts are public for PC games, fans quickly start comparing numbers. A jokey reference to a “small indie” game might raise a chuckle when the AAA title is clearly dominant, but when the indie‑looking game surges past the big shooter, the same line suddenly reads like gloating.

Game studios and publishers have grown more cautious about how they talk publicly about competitors, especially as social media backlash can escalate into broader reputation issues. Industry bodies like the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) and major publishers regularly emphasize professional conduct and mutual respect in public communications, reflecting how closely these interactions are watched.⁴

Developers as Fans and Competitors

One nuance sometimes lost in the discourse is that many developers are also fans of other studios’ work. A joking reference to Marathon from the Slay the Spire 2 camp can be both a nod of respect and a jab. That dual role—colleague and competitor—makes the tone tricky to navigate.

In this case, the swift clarification that the “small indie” line was not meant as a dig at Marathon’s actual performance helped reset the tone. It suggested awareness that, even unintentionally, developers don’t want to appear to celebrate another team’s rough launch.

Shared Lessons for Players, Developers, and Platforms

This collision between Slay the Spire 2’s runaway success and Marathon’s tougher debut offers a few broader lessons about the modern PC gaming ecosystem.

For Players

• Your attention is the real currency: Buying a game supports it, but sustained play and word of mouth matter just as much.
• Multiple games can win: Enjoying one release doesn’t require rooting for another to fail. Supporting varied genres enriches the whole ecosystem.
• Numbers don’t tell the whole story: Steam charts and concurrency figures are useful but incomplete. Console playerbases, regional platforms, and long‑term retention can be just as important.

For Developers

• Launch timing is high‑risk, high‑reward: Releasing alongside big titles can offer cross‑traffic or result in being overshadowed; predicting which is difficult.
• Humor travels without context: Jokes aimed at peers or mega‑publishers can look very different once success or failure becomes visible.
• Communication is part of the launch: Social media tone, patch transparency, and engagement with community feedback all influence how a game’s early days are perceived.

For Platforms

• Discovery tools shape narratives: Charts, tags, review summaries, and curated carousels can amplify surprise hits and bury quieter launches.
• Clarity about algorithms matters: Valve’s periodic explanations of how Steam recommendations work help developers understand why some titles rise faster than others.¹
• Early access is no longer niche: What used to be a scrappy model for tiny teams is now a mainstream strategy, and platforms must treat it as a core part of their ecosystems.

Looking Ahead: Can Both Games Find Their Space?

Slay the Spire 2 is well‑positioned for a long life. The original game benefited from years of balance tweaks, mod support, and community‑driven experimentation. If the sequel follows a similar path, it may thrive for years, expanding via updates and potential DLC rather than burning out quickly.

For Marathon, the challenge is more acute but not insurmountable. Live service games commonly launch with rough edges or mixed reception, then gradually improve as studios iterate. Bungie has already demonstrated an ability to pivot and refine content in response to player feedback through its work on Destiny 2.⁵ If Marathon receives sustained support, it could still carve out a dedicated community even if its Steam debut looked underwhelming compared to Slay the Spire 2’s explosion.

Ultimately, the incident underscores that the games industry is not a zero‑sum equation. A deckbuilding roguelike and a sci‑fi extraction shooter can coexist, grow, and even cross‑pollinate their audiences over time. Launch week comparisons are only a snapshot, and a jokey tweet is not the final word on either game’s legacy.

FAQ: Slay the Spire 2, Marathon, and Launch‑Day Discourse

Is Slay the Spire 2 really an indie game?

Slay the Spire 2 is developed by a relatively small studio compared with major AAA teams, and it grew out of the indie success of the original game. While it now enjoys strong publisher backing and a large fan base, it still reflects many characteristics of independent development: focused scope, a small core team, and reliance on community feedback during early access.

Why did the “small indie passion project” comment cause controversy?

The line was initially framed as a playful jab at Marathon, a large‑budget project from Bungie. When Slay the Spire 2 dramatically outperformed Marathon on Steam at launch, that quip looked less like harmless banter and more like mockery of a struggling game. The developer clarified that this wasn’t the intent and acknowledged that, with hindsight, the wording felt harsher than expected.

Do Slay the Spire 2 and Marathon actually compete with each other?

They target different genres and playstyles, but they do compete for players’ limited time, money, and attention—especially on a shared platform like Steam and within the same release window. Moreover, media coverage and social media discussion often frame simultaneous launches as direct comparisons, even when the games themselves are very different.

Can Marathon still succeed after a slow start on Steam?

Yes, though it’s an uphill climb. Live service games can and do recover from lukewarm launches when studios invest in improvements, communicate transparently, and respond to player feedback. Destiny 2, for example, significantly evolved over time with expansions and systemic changes.⁵ Marathon’s long‑term fate will depend more on ongoing support than its initial concurrency numbers alone.

What can players do if they want to support multiple games launching at once?

Players can wishlist titles ahead of time, buy when they’re able, leave thoughtful reviews, and spread the word through streaming or social posts. Importantly, they can avoid framing enthusiasm for one game as hostility toward another; championing multiple projects is often the best way to encourage experimentation and variety in future releases.