Marathon season 2 suffers rocky launch thanks to rampant errors and bugs

Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter, launched its second season, Nightfall, on June 3rd, accompanied by major updates including a full progression reset, UI overhaul, new character class, additional weapons, and a new map called Night Dire Marsh featuring equipment like torches and sonar pulses along with new Anomaly creatures and UESC Certification activities. The season represented a crucial release for Bungie following Destiny 2’s end of live service support.

However, the launch was severely compromised by widespread server instability. Players encountered rampant “Weasel, Monkey, and Anteater” error codes—Bungie’s notorious server indicators—that forcibly disconnected players from matches mid-game, resulting in lost loot and considerable frustration. The technical failures forced Bungie to take the game offline for several hours of emergency maintenance to address the elevated error rates.

The troubled rollout proved especially damaging because it coincided with Marathon’s first free-to-play week (June 2–9), which had been prominently featured at Sony’s State of Play conference. This promotional window was designed to attract new players, but the server problems severely undermined the opportunity to make a strong first impression during this critical launch period.

In response, Bungie announced compensation for affected players in the form of free deluxe sponsored kits—pre-packaged loadouts—acknowledging the launch failures and attempting to mitigate player frustration over the disrupted experience.

Marathon season 2 suffers rocky launch thanks to rampant errors and bugs

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