Marathon Beta Censored "Arc Raiders" In Chat For A Brief Time

Marathon's pre-release server slam is running throughout this weekend, giving gamers their first proper chance to try Bungie's extraction shooter. Whilst getting a feel for the gameplay, some players also discovered that the phrase "Arc Raiders" was censored from Marathon's in-game chat.

Clips showing the censorship started circulating online, as picked up by Kotaku. Streamer Lirik posted a clip testing the chat censor, finding that Arc Raiders appeared to be the only major shooter that was banned from discussion in Marathon. While posting "arc," "raiders," or even "arcraiders" was allowed, the game would blank out "Arc Raiders" as a phrase, even with spaces or double spaces between the letters. Kotaku also tested the chat filter in-game, confirming what had been posted by streamers and content creators.

In response to a similar clip on X, the Marathon dev team account soon posted a screenshot showing Arc Raiders uncensored in chat, reversing the word filter. The dev team's screenshot reads "Arc Raiders is awesome. 2 cakes!" referring to a popular meme about comparison in art--however the screenshot was posted without any explanation of why Arc Raiders was censored in chat to begin with.