Bungie, the Best Solution to Tackle Proximity Chat Toxicity in Marathon Already Exists – The Mute Button
Bungie has confirmed that Marathon won’t have proximity chat, which many feel is essential for an extraction shooter title like Marathon. Why? To create a safe place for players, as it could lead to players saying terrible things about each other. While understandable, anyone playing a multiplayer game over the last 20 years is probably well-versed enough to know this is entirely unavoidable.
Only, it isn’t, as most games, even those released decades ago, already have several options to combat this.
Guys, It’s Called the Mute for a Reason. USE IT
As confirmed earlier this week, proximity chat won’t be featured in Marathon. Game director Joe Ziegler said, “I don’t think anyone really has a good solution to that just yet. Because we’re so dedicated to making sure that we’re creating a safe space where we don’t have players just flaming each other or doing terrible things to one another, I think we’re not ready to invest in prox chat until we have a solution.”
I don’t know about you guys, but that “solution” has existed since the dawn of online multiplayer games.
A lesson I learned while playing Call of Duty when Modern Warfare 2007 came out was that I hated listening to some of my teammates. While the game didn’t have proximity chat to hear what the enemy was saying until we all got thrown back into the lobby, it did have team chat, and if I weren’t hanging around with a whole group of players I knew, well, things would often get real ugly. Be that someone blasting music as high as their volume can go or slinging slurs at other teammates and enemies and calling everyone trash when the reality was more of them being trash.
Toxic player behaviour was something I learned very early on, though it wasn’t really from Call of Duty but rather Bungie’s own Halo 2, which at the time did feature proximity chat. A feature that allowed you to communicate with the enemy team once you got close enough to them. This presented some opportunities to trash talk one another, though much like Call of Duty, it could easily turn into something much crueler, with players saying things that they probably would never say to another person if they were face to face. There’s more than a handful of videos out there showing stuff like that, and it’s pretty shocking to hear some of the things coming out of some players’ mouths. But hey, that was how things were in gaming back then, and knowing full well the game I was playing was rated M for mature, it became an expectation eventually.
Now, I can’t remember if the original Halo 2 had a mute option. I played a lot of LAN setups back in those days, so the discussion was more respectful, with trash talk being playful rather than deliberately hurtful cause we were all mostly friends at the time. But Modern Warfare, on the other hand, did feature a mute button, and that’s something used constantly on the fly. Mind you, this was on players on the same team as mine, highlighting that toxic behavior doesn’t always come from the opposing team. We assume Marathon at least features team chat, and the only way to combat would be to assumely mute the other player.
That begs the question: What exact solution is Bungie looking for to resolve this? Nearly all games today feature the ability to mute other players. Heck, many games allow you to turn in-game voice chat off completely, meaning you don’t need to go over a player’s name and hit that button. You can turn the option off and never hear another voice in-game again in some games. Escape From Tarkov, perhaps the biggest extraction shooter right now, has the option to turn in-game Voip off and even warns what you can expect when you enable it.
Let the Players Decide How They Want to Experience the Game
I don’t know, from a consumer perspective, as someone who uses those options to mute players and turn voice chat off. Toxic voice chat hasn’t been a problem I’ve ever had to encounter in a very long time. In almost every online game I play, the voice chat options are amongst the first I go to. Now, of course, not everyone likes playing like that, but that’s the point—it’s an option, one that players should decide for themselves.
Now, Tarkov removes voice communications entirely when you turn it off, but seriously, it’s 2025, and there are so many other forms of communication. Both PlayStation and Xbox allow for private chat parties and now support Discord for chatting with friends across platforms freely. You don’t have to rely on in-game voice chat, which, more often than not, is horrendous compared to using the built-in system features or another app.
It’s not like Bungie can’t just add an option to keep communication only with squads, either. There are so many roads that Bungie can take, but to say that a good solution hasn’t been found just doesn’t seem like a good reason when those solutions already exist. Heck, if the studio really wanted to, they could just feature it but keep it turned off by default and let players choose if they want it. Or maybe have it as part of the onboarding process, a big splash screen that explains what it is, inform the players, and then let them decide.
As someone who no longer uses voice chat in-game, I completely understand why many want it. Some of the most memorable moments in gaming have come from it, and there are probably cases of friendships and such coming from it. Now, the same is also true for the opposite effect, but that’s just the nature of it. You’ll never solve that other than employ better reporting tools and moderation.
At the end of the day, proximity chat isn’t inherently the problem—it’s how we choose to manage it. The tools to foster a safer, more respectful environment already exist, and many of them have been in place for well over a decade. What players are asking for isn’t chaos—it’s choice. Give us the ability to opt in or out, mute, report, and control our own experiences.
Bungie helped define social multiplayer experiences with Halo, and it seems strange that now, they’re choosing to step back from something so integral to the experience, especially in an extraction shooter. If the concern is protecting players, fine—protect them. But don’t do it by limiting the very systems that make these types of games so unpredictable, thrilling, and memorable.
If they want to hear someone screaming on their mics nonstop and being the most annoying thing in the world, well, who am I to say no? Let players decide how they want to engage. That’s always been the better solution.
Marathon releases September 23 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
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Exactly! I use it all the time in COD.
Proximity chat was one of absolute best things about Halo 2 back in 2005. Yes there was already a convenient option at that time to mute players in-game by using the scoreboard. There was nothing toxic about it unless someone was a 100% complete wussy in which case they were supposed to get the frick out of the kitchen on the double- no detours- if they couldn’t handle the heat. It is the duty of the tactful soldier to get the opponent to “rage quit” as soon as humanly possible obviously for advancement purposes. Who is the toxicologist Bungie hired anywho in order to try and navigate toxicity? Let me guess, some kind of proponent of immunosuppressants right? Just silence everybody and mute everybody and suppress the immune system and mask everybody up and duct tape everybody’s mouths shut and pretend uncomfortable subjects will just resolve themselves sans adequate dissemination right?
Pathetic to think some adults still believe they can live on top of their refrigerators forever given current American military culture obviously suppresses qualms and emotionality alike left and right. When was the last time a general in the US military was convicted of any serious crime? Are they saints or something? I swear this culture of merciless suppression has reached the boiling point already and one of the only avenues left to express oneself maybe Congressional testimony which is sad because every member of Congress is of course bought and paid for. I say now that it is painfully apparent for anybody with vision that the final hope this nation has of breaking the Alexander Tytler Cycle is the organic ascension of the first ever living six-star general (of the armies.)