AAA Just Got Brutally Humiliated By 10 Developers

By Veteran Joystick

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Slay the Spire 2 just launched in Early Access and immediately crushed Bungie’s Marathon in concurrent players on Steam. While Bungie’s new AAA extraction shooter, Marathon, from the studio behind Destiny, peaked around 88k players, Slay the Spire 2, the roguelike deckbuilder sequel from Mega Crit, exploded past hundreds of thousands of players on launch day! The contrast couldn’t be clearer. Bungie’s Marathon represents the modern AAA live service model. Slay the Spire 2 represents the opposite, a focused indie roguelike built by a small team that simply prioritised making a great game. And players noticed. This moment highlights a growing shift in the gaming industry. Indie games like Slay the Spire are increasingly outperforming massive AAA live service games like Marathon because players are tired of recycled live service templates and aggressive monetization. Bungie once had enormous trust thanks to Halo and Destiny, but years of live service decisions have destroyed that. From

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