Bungie Confirms Absence Of Proximity Chat in Marathon
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- Marathon game director confirmed that a proximity chat feature is not going to be added to Marathon.
- They believe that the addition of the feature will open the game to toxicity.
- Marathon will be released on September 23, 2025, for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
On April 13, Bungie confirmed that Marathon will not have a proximity voice chat feature as the development team thought adding it would make the game toxic. The feature is very popular in the extraction shooter genre as it allows players to negotiate and even roleplay with other people in the game.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Joseph Ziegler, Marathon’s game director, said that the developers are not against the proximity voice chat experience. However, they believe that its addition will make it challenging for them to create a safe environment for players.
“I don’t think anyone really has a good solution to that just yet,” Ziegler mentioned, talking about the possibility of toxicity if the feature was added. “Because we’re so dedicated to making sure that we’re creating a safe space where we don’t have players just flaming each other or doing terrible things to one another, I think we’re not ready to invest in prox [proximity] chat until we have a solution.”
While the developers are not closed to the possibility of proximity chat, it’s currently not in their priorities to create one that guarantees no toxicity to ever fly towards the mic and into another person’s headphones. Ziegler adds, “Like, if it was magical and we could somehow come up with that solution, I think we totally would do it.”
Marathon has recently shown a bit of gameplay on April 13. Players will have access to six runners they will use whenever they load into maps and fight other squads or NPCs for loot. The game is set to be released on September 23, 2025, for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
