The former "Marathon" project director revealed that he had pushed hard to create a new genre name for the game, and bluntly said that the "evacuation shooting" classification label was "very stupid" and believed that it was the only game type named after a gameplay mechanism.

Although the sci-fi shooting game "Marathon" developed by Bungie has not yet been officially released, the "escape shooting" genre that has quickly become popular with works such as "Escape from Tarkov" is becoming a hot topic, making the project one of the most discussed works currently.Embark Studio's new game "ARC Raiders" has exceeded expectations with 462,000 concurrent Steam online users, setting a record within one week of release. This not only confirms the market's strong interest in this genre, but also indicates a bright future.

However, there are differences in the industry on type naming methods.Former Bungie member Chris Seitz, who was directly involved in the development of Marathon, publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the term "extraction shooter", believing that it failed to accurately convey the core experience of this type of game.

Chris Seitz, who served as the product management director of "Marathon" from June 2020 to July 2024, revealed that he worked hard with the Bungie marketing team to push for the redefinition of the type name.

When talking about Submarine 2 and the extraction shooter genre, Saez said: "The problem is that Submarine 2 can be called an extraction shooter, but it is completely different. It's a terrible genre name, and I hate it. When developing Marathon, I was in constant discussion with the marketing team to create a new genre name, because 'Evacuation Shooter' is so stupid - it is the only game type named after a mechanic."

He further explained: "Is "Battlefield 2" classified into this category because of the evacuation link? But it has no similarity with "Escape from Tarkov". This lagging terminology system has seriously affected reasonable comparisons between games."

"Arena Breakout and Escape from Tarkov can be compared because they both fall into the traditional evacuation shooting framework. However, it is completely inappropriate to compare ARC Raiders with Escape from Tarkov. Perhaps it is more appropriate to compare it with Rust? And is Rust an evacuation game? It is essentially a survival game."

"The fundamental crux of this is that... the nature of the genre itself has not yet been clarified. As a player, how can you predict the content of the experience? I think this is the core dilemma facing the genre."

Seitz also revealed that the Bungie team has always paid close attention to similar competing products, including Embark's "ARC Raiders": "We have been paying attention to this game a few years ago, and its progress is amazing."

Despite the criticism, Bungie still positions Marathon as a "team evacuation shooter."The game has completed closed technical testing at the end of October 2025, and official progress or developer logs are expected to be announced in the coming weeks or months.

It is reported that since the closed beta test in April, the game has undergone a number of updates, including the addition of new runner characters, detailed adjustments to the final map "Marathon" and its operating mechanism, and the codex system.