{"id":735167,"date":"2026-06-30T16:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735167\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:45:09","slug":"viral-marathon-fan-hit-level-45-without-ever-extracting-or-looting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735167\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral Marathon Fan Hit Level 45 Without Ever Extracting Or Looting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A story from the Marathon<\/a> subreddit about a player named Steve who reached level 45 by only killing robots is a new viral reminder of how lots of people actually play games. Steve spent a bunch of time in Bungie\u2019s new shooter without ever extracting, grabbing loot, completing contracts, killing other players, or even buying upgrades.<\/p>\n

Some suggest the story is a lie, that Marathon Steve is too absurd, too pure, to be a real person who exists in this world. But in addition to the video footage that\u2019s been shared to back up the claim, I also believe Marathon Steve is real because he proves what game devs already understand: No tutorial is perfect. There\u2019s always a Marathon Steve out there, playing their own and probably having a great time.<\/p>\n

On June 29, Reddit user Carpocalypto posted about this \u201cnot serious gamer\u201d friend Steve<\/a>. According to the user, Steve is a 46-year-old man who bought Bungie\u2019s online extraction FPS, Marathon, after a recent free weekend. Before that, he mostly played Madden and some Call of Duty. Steve had played the old Marathon games back on Mac and assumed that the point of this new one was to kill robots. That\u2019s all Steve did in Marathon. That\u2019s it. Like literally.<\/p>\n

According to Steve\u2019s friend, after they teamed up to play Marathon for the first time, the Reddit user learned that Steve had never extracted, \u201cat least to his knowledge.\u201d Steven had never completed a single quest or contract, collected any rewards, claimed a codex entry, and had only used free kits up to this point. He only played Destroyer, and while he knew it had a shield, he didn\u2019t know about Destroyer\u2019s rockets. Steve wasn\u2019t even sure if another player had killed him or if he had killed another player. He also assumed his vault, which normally holds all your loot, was a trophy case filled with items he collected from robots. Steve had never created a loadout.<\/p>\n

Steve\u2019s friend says the 45-year-old gamer\u2019s mind was \u201cblown\u201d as they spent \u201cabout an hour going through the various menus, shells,\u201d and other parts of Marathon. Throughout all of this, Steven apparently continued to say, \u201cAre you fucking kidding me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, after learning all about how Marathon works, Steve is now \u201cat least aware of\u201d most of the game\u2019s systems. He plays Thief now and has reached level 52. With the help of his friend, Steve extracted a few times, killed some runners, and had a good time. He\u2019s even extracted on his own, too.<\/p>\n

Some online didn\u2019t believe the Marathon Steve story, even after the original poster shared some video proof of Steve\u2019s existence. But if you\u2019ve played video games long enough or been around games for enough years, you knew Steve was a real dude.<\/p>\n

Steve reminds me of a friend I knew who had no idea you could level up in an RPG (might have been Oblivion?) he was playing and just went around collecting stuff and fighting rats and other weak enemies because the big ones were \u201ctoo hard.\u201d Sounds terrible, but they enjoyed their life as a level 1 nobody in a fantasy world. You\u2019d think a tutorial pop-up or message would have set him straight, but like Steve, for some people there is no amount of yellow paint or tutorializing that will get them on the right path. And that\u2019s fine. People can enjoy games however they want.<\/p>\n

Heck, I remember playing some shooter when I was younger and not realizing until very late that you could cook grenades, stealth kill people, or hold your breath while aiming. Sometimes you know a Steve. Sometimes you are Steve.<\/p>\n

In some ways, I\u2019m envious of Marathon Steve. I\u2019ve not enjoyed Marathon as much in recent weeks as fewer players are hopping on and the ones who remain are very sweaty and deadly. My runs tend to end in frustration and failure. But Steve, he was having a blast just killing bots and having a grand old time doing it again and again.<\/p>\n

I honestly feel a bit sad for Steve. His time with Marathon as a single-player PvE robot killin\u2019 simulator is over now, and he\u2019s on the same live-service shooter treadmill as all of us. It almost makes me sad. But then Steve\u2019s friend posted the final text message he received after they played together, and it sounds like this new version of Marathon is treating Steve well, too:<\/p>\n

\u201cBro. Exfilling while I\u2019m mid-firefight with a huge amount of loot and still smoking fools is next to heaven!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A story from the Marathon subreddit about a player named Steve who reached level 45 by only killing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[29840,67842,12627,74],"class_list":["post-735167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-bungie","tag-marathon","tag-steve","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}