Marathon season 2 launch plagued by anteaters, monkeys and weasels, with Bungie dishing out free gear to say sorry for the server issues
Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter, experienced significant server issues during its Season 2 launch. Players attempting to access the game encountered a barrage of error messages featuring animal-themed error codes—Anteater, Monkey, and Weasel errors—as the game’s servers struggled to handle the influx of players during the content update.
To address the widespread outages, Bungie temporarily took Marathon offline and deployed a patch specifically targeting the elevated error rates. The incident resulted in a multi-hour disruption that prevented players from accessing the new seasonal content during the critical launch window.
In response to the launch day troubles, Bungie announced it would distribute free in-game gear as compensation to affected players. This gesture aims to maintain player goodwill following the significant service disruption. The distribution of compensatory rewards is a common industry practice following major technical failures that prevent players from accessing services.
The launch issues underscore ongoing challenges live-service games face when handling player surges during seasonal content drops. Despite these technical difficulties, Season 2 itself appears to have launched successfully once the server infrastructure stabilized, allowing players to eventually access the new content.