A typical PS Store blunder has forced Sony to give away free copies of a major March 2026 first-party game. A free play promotion for Bungie’s Marathon kicked off last week, during which the game’s Deluxe Edition content bundle was heavily discounted on the PS Store. However, the bundle’s listing erroneously mentioned that the Deluxe Edition includes a full copy of Marathon.
PS Store users hopeful that Sony will learn some hard lessons after having to give away full Marathon PS5 game for free
We saw the original PS Store listing and can confirm it was misleading, as it specifically mentioned that a copy of Marathon was included in the Deluxe Edition.
To top it off, the Deluxe Edition content bundle was only supposed to be available for purchase to those who owned a copy of Marathon. When the free play week went live, and players downloaded Marathon, Sony’s long-running licensing issues kicked in, and the PS Store considered free trial users as full game owners.
Thus, the misleading listing for the discounted Deluxe Edition became available to free play users, many of whom purchased it thinking they were getting a good deal. Not quite.
As a result, those free play users were stuck with Deluxe Edition DLC for a game they didn’t even own and had no plans to purchase at full price. Backlash ensued, prompting Sony and Bungie to honor those purchases and issue a warning to prospective buyers.
Like many others, we hope that Sony will finally pay attention to long-running PS Store licensing bugs after this debacle. We’ve only written about it a million times.
