Marathon, the sci-fi extraction shooter from Bungie, released yesterday on PC and consoles and, while still the same core experience as the popular Server Slam, a few bugs have crept into the full launch. The most bizarre of those: a glitch that allows Deluxe Edition owners to max out the season one reward pass in a matter of minutes.
Here’s how it works. For those out there who forked out a bit extra for the Deluxe Edition of Marathon, they’ll have found 200 free Silk on their account. Silk is in-game currency in Marathon, earnable by playing and used solely on these reward passes. The in-game cap of Silk is 140, but thanks to the game’s Silk overflow system, any extra players got via the Deluxe Edition package can be used by simply restarting the game. Simple!
Here’s the problem. When players restart the game to get their remaining 60 Silk, they found they actually received the whole free Deluxe Edition Silk package again. This could be repeatable, so you’d spend everything but your Silk overflow, restart the game, then log back in to find all the spent Silk restored and your Reward Pass unlocks honoured. After a few restarts, players were fully unlocking the Reward Pass in minutes.
So why does this matter? Well, its severity depends on your perspective. On one hand, players are blasting through a Reward Pass far quicker than others, meaning they can unlock cooler cosmetics than those not using this glitch. However, Silk doesn’t buy player power, nor is it purchasable with real-world money. In fact, only those who spent additional money on the Deluxe Edition could do this. It’s essentially like opening your birthday presents early.
Some Marathon players believe this does constitute cheating, however. Bungie had previously issued a statement on its “no second chances” cheating policy. In it, the developer emphasised that anyone found cheating would be permanently banned. Does abusing an exploit like this measure up to the same level of punishment as using wallhacks or an aim bot? Probably not.
The most likely outcome is a form of ‘rollback’ for the Reward Pass, resetting artificial progress – which wouldn’t be the first time Bungie has implemented rollbacks for in-game bugs. Quite famously, Destiny 2 suffered a character corruption bug during The Witch Queen expansion that resulted in a 24 hour server outage and full character rollback. This bug, it’s worth noting, had drastically worse implications for the user experience than slapping on a fancy skin earlier than intended.
This Deluxe Edition bug is not the only one Marathon has suffered during its launch day. Players were initially unable to redeem their Deluxe Edition bonuses on Steam, which was fixed in short order. In addition, Twitch drops for exclusive cosmetics were also not functioning properly, and in some cases Lux (premium currency) was properly appearing on the accounts of those who bought it. It’s been a slightly shaky start, then, but it’ll be interesting to see how Bungie handles these initial hurdles.
Eurogamer has contacted Bungie for comment on this matter.
