GoKawiilPlayers enjoying Bungie's advertised free week of Marathon were offered what appeared to be the deluxe edition of the game for just $14, only to find out that what they really purchased was nothing but a cosmetics bundle. It's yet another bump in the road for Bungie, which is betting the farm on Marathon as it winds down its only other active title, Destiny 2. To add insult to injury, the mistake does not appear to be Bungie's fault.
The confusion appears to have been caused by the way Sony lists the different versions of the game in the PlayStation Store. When we look at the price for the Marathon Deluxe Edition, it shows as discounted to $41.99. That's still a nice discount off the usual $60 price tag, but a far cry from $14. However, once the free trial version of Marathon being offered during the free week was added to a PlayStation library, we saw the price on the deluxe version update to be just $14. What's actually happening? Well, when a player adds the free trial to their library, PlayStation Store treats it as owning the full game. The player is then shown the difference in price compared to the base edition as if they had paid full price for it, but paying that $14 difference only gives you the extra cosmetic content. It's easy to see how this might cause widespread confusion.
This marks the second rough spot for the free week of Marathon, which initially helped the game surge to around 40,000 Steam players on June 2 before experiencing widespread server issues that forced Bungie to perform emergency maintenance. That this latest controversy is a PlayStation issue likely won't matter to those still on the fence about trying out Marathon. The game has struggled to maintain popularity despite rave reviews, and the free week came alongside the launch of its second season in an attempt to bolster those numbers.