Marathon Accidentally Censors Arc Raiders in Text Chat
Bungie’s upcoming sci-fi extraction shooter, Marathon, has a lot going for it, but it also has one massive hurdle to clear: Arc Raiders. Embark Studios’ own extraction shooter has been riding a massive wave of popularity, to the point where it seemingly influenced some of the major reworks Bungie’s game underwent over the last year.
Because of this intense rivalry, it was incredibly amusing when players diving into the weekend server slam playtest noticed a suspicious bug where Marathon censors Arc Raiders in its text chat.
Players quickly noticed that typing the rival game’s name resulted in an immediate chat filter block.
The issue was first highlighted by streamers and players who realized that both “Arc Raiders” and “Raiders” were instantly replaced by hash symbols (#). You couldn’t even bypass the filter by spacing the letters out. Interestingly, the names of other competing shooters—like Call of Duty, Destiny, and Escape From Tarkov—passed through the chat filter without a hitch.
Naturally, the community’s first instinct was to assume intentional pettiness. However, PC Gamer and other outlets quickly verified the bug before Bungie quietly pushed a fix. As funny as the idea of a developer manually banning a rival’s name is, this was almost certainly an accident.
In fact, this exact scenario has played out multiple times across the industry recently. Back in October 2025, Activision’s Black Ops 7 experienced a similar text filter error, and earlier that year, the EA App tripped over the exact same phrase. Because large-scale chat filters often share backend databases or automated safety systems, it’s highly likely that a universal third-party list flagged the word inadvertently, rather than EA, Activision, and Bungie all forming a secret alliance against Embark.
Adding a wholesome twist to the debacle, the official Marathon Development Team account eventually responded to a clip of the bug on X (formerly Twitter). They posted an image proving the phrase was now uncensored in their chat box, and even went out of their way to call Arc Raiders “awesome.”
While the exact technical cause remains a bit of a mystery, the problem is officially resolved. The development team has noted that they are investigating separate reports of players’ names inadvertently being changed to “Redacted,” which might be tied to the same hyper-aggressive chat filter update. For now, though, you’re free to talk about Arc Raiders in Marathon all you want—just watch your back while you do it.
For more updates on Bungie and the latest extraction shooter news, stay tuned to Raidenza.
