Marathon Players Smuggled Powerful Loot From The Beta Into Game

"In Marathon, if you drop a piece of gear for a teammate and you all extract successfully, you get that gear back. This is intended to make it hard to trade gear with other players permanently, which could likely be used by some to sell rare loot. It also encourages players to share guns with squadmates to ensure everyone gets out alive."

"As documented on Reddit and Twitter, some players who lent a gun, backpack, or other piece of gear to another player during the open beta are getting those items back on day one of Marathon's launch. This includes some players allegedly finding powerful and rare weapons and super-useful backpacks just waiting for them to grab and use."

"As some players pointed out, if people had known about this before the Server Slam ended, we'd have likely seen a huge amount of folks sharing gear before extracting to try to game the system. This all seems unintended, as Bungie made it clear that beta gear and progress would not be carried over to the main game."

Bungie's extraction shooter Marathon launched on March 5 across multiple platforms with generally stable performance, though some PC players reported issues and microtransactions drew criticism. The game features a loot-sharing mechanic where dropped gear returns to the original owner if the squad extracts successfully, designed to prevent permanent trading and encourage cooperation. However, a bug caused players who shared items during the open beta to find that loot still in their inbox at launch, contradicting Bungie's statement that beta progress wouldn't carry over. Some players obtained powerful weapons and rare backpacks unintentionally, and had players known about this persistence, many would have exploited it before the beta ended.

Read at Kotaku