TL:DR
It is not clear how long an “audit” will take of the assets to remove or find any more plagiarism, as it’s an expansive enough process to have Bungie not even show any footage at all in its recent livestream.
Morale is in “free-fall” across all departments, and “the vibes have never been worse.” Everyone has the same concerns about what happens to Bungie as a studio if Marathon bombs, which is something they absolutely cannot afford.
There are not even hints or jokes about a delay from the September release date internally.
It’s unclear what the plan is to launch the game in a “now actively hostile environment” just a few months from now, or how to turn that around.
At the start of this month Bungie pulled the plug on its main Marathon marketing plan which was going to have a new trailer in June along with the launch of pre-orders. The whole campaign needs to be reworked now.
A heavily marketed Public Beta in August may be changed into a “roadmap of public playtests” with no actual details set yet.
Marathon was originally pitched by higher-up “good old boy” Bungie leadership and as far back as five years ago devs were telling them what would and wouldn’t work and were often ignored. Many have said previously that it needed to have some sort of PvE component.
Its over. Marathon is cooked and Bungie is dying with it.