Former Marathon Manager Slams the Extraction Shooter Label in Candid Podcast Discussion

The extraction shooter debate has resurfaced with unusual force this week, as former Bungie product manager Chris Sides questioned whether the term should exist at all. His remarks, shared on the Shooter Monthly Podcast, cut directly into the current conversation around a genre that has surged in visibility thanks to Escape from Tarkov, Arc Raiders, and a growing catalogue of similar titles. The label, he argued, hasn’t kept pace with the variety of games it tries to contain.

“The genre name is so bad,” Sides said. “I hate the genre name of extraction shooter. When I was working on Marathon, I was working with marketing, dying to be like, ‘Can we please create a different genre name?’ because ‘extraction shooter’ is so dumb. It’s the only genre where its name is a mechanic.” — Chris Sides

The distinction matters, he explained, because the tag often misleads players. When the podcast host pressed him with “battle royale,” he pushed back without hesitation, calling it a mode rather than a mechanic. He pointed to Helldivers 2 as an example: it has extraction, but it doesn’t belong in the same category as Tarkov. The result is a loose container that obscures differences between games built for survival, persistence, or high-risk looting, leaving players uncertain about what they are stepping into.

Sides described the issue as a structural problem. Arena Breakout and Escape from Tarkov sit close enough to compare, he said, but Arc Raiders drifts into different territory. Rust complicates the picture further: its survival framework contains extraction, but doesn’t operate on the same principles. A term that lumps these together, he argued, reduces clarity rather than adding it.

“It’s really the fact that the genre doesn’t even know what it is,” he said.

“You, as a player — how do you know what you’re going to get?”

His comments arrive as Marathon continues to navigate a long, uneven stretch. Sides left Bungie in 2024 to consult independently and begin forming a new studio, while Marathon moved through a turbulent period that hasn’t fully settled. Last year’s technical test drew heavy criticism, prompting Bungie to pull the game off schedule for extended internal review. Only recently did Sony reaffirm that the title is still planned for release before the end of March 2026, though the condition in which it will ship remains uncertain.

The background to that pledge is complicated. Bungie had already delayed Marathon once, extending its development window indefinitely after a wave of negative feedback from its reveal and alpha playtest. The studio acknowledged the criticism at the time in a detailed message to its community, thanking players for what it called “passionate” responses and outlining a broad plan to refocus the project. Those steps included raising the difficulty of survival encounters, strengthening AI, expanding loot variety, overhauling visual direction, and returning to more grounded storytelling connected to the original trilogy’s tone. Additional closed tests are expected over the coming months.

The studio’s broader struggles have been difficult to ignore. Over the last two years, Bungie has faced leadership turnover, morale concerns, legal challenges, and scattered accusations that its internal culture has narrowed rather than opened. Marathon was expected to help steady the studio’s ambitions in live-service development, but its prolonged instability has instead sharpened scrutiny. Each update now carries added weight, not least because the extraction shooter label — however flawed, Sides considers it — ties Marathon to a crowded and highly competitive space.

Sides’ critique may not reshape the terminology overnight, yet it underlines a growing tension within a fast-expanding category. Studios are using the same phrase to describe games with fundamentally different rhythms, stakes, and expectations, and that gap is starting to show. For players, the question is what the term will eventually represent: a coherent field of design or a placeholder stretched beyond meaning.

Read also, Marathon Leaks: NDA-covered Alpha Reveals Major Fixes And A Shot At Redemption — Early descriptions from a recent closed build point to denser environments, stronger lighting, and more confident world-building, suggesting Bungie may be inching toward a version that better matches its original vision.