Marathon game director Joe Ziegler announced today that he will be leaving Bungie, with today being his last day at the studio. The news comes less than a month after the studio lost approximately half its workforce and shuttered development on Destiny 2. Ziegler will be succeeded by Del Chafe III, along with creative director Julia Nardin, who will both be taking over to try and salvage what’s left of the Marathon dream. Image via Bungie “Both of them have been operating in a strong leadership capacity for the team and are ready to guide Marathon into the next chapter with an even better and brighter future,” Ziegler said. “I’m proud of them and I’m excited to see them helm the future of this crazy little world we’ve created together.” Ziegler, meanwhile, says he will “be heading to something new, somewhere else, and will update you on where and what soon.” But for now, the future of both Marathon and Bungie feels incredibly bleak just a few years after Sony’s $3.6 billion purchase of the studio famous for Halo and Destiny. “I just want to say a deeply heartfelt thank you to all of you for supporting me and Marathon in our windy mission to bring a dark and terrifying space survival frontier to your screen,” he said. “The mission will continue in new and surprising ways so stay tuned for what this team has in store for you! It’s been a pleasure seeing all the stories you’ve created, all the clever ways you’ve found ways to murder robots and one another.” Marathon’s development and launch have indeed been “windy,” to say the least. The game has yet to find a foothold when it comes to a playerbase as a hardcore extraction shooter, which has only exacerbated the situation at the studio after Destiny 2’s numbers also declined, leading to massive turnover at the Washington-based developer. The game is trying out an experimental PvE mode with an update next week, and a full-fledged version will arrive in September in an effort to entice more players, but it may be too late for the game to really find a strong enough financial footing to keep it operational much longer. Image via Bungie “Hopefully as I move onto new things, you’ll join me for those adventures as well,” Ziegler said, in closing. “Much love to the Marathon community and to all my friends and colleagues at Bungie. May we cross paths again. Keep it weird, keep it real.”0The post Marathon game director joins Bungie’s mass exodus, by choice or otherwise appeared first on Destructoid.