Will Marathon Run on the Steam Machine?

Short version: the Steam Machine almost certainly has the raw horsepower to run Marathon at a competitive frame rate, but whether it runs at all hinges on one thing you can't benchmark — anti-cheat support on SteamOS. We do not have a measured Steam Machine verdict for Marathon yet, so everything below is an outlook based on the game's known demands and the Machine's RX 7600-class profile. Measured numbers will follow once we can test it.

The hardware question is the easy one

Marathon is an online extraction shooter, not a single-player showcase. Bungie builds its engine around responsiveness and consistent frame pacing, the same way Destiny 2 ran well on modest hardware for years. That genre lives or dies on stable frame rate, not on path-traced lighting.

The Steam Machine sits roughly at the RX 7600 / RTX 4060 tier, with a Zen 4 6-core/12-thread CPU and 16 GB of DDR5. For a competitive shooter targeting 1080p, that's a comfortable bracket. A game like Marathon is built to scale down — its whole business model depends on players being able to load in and stay in. Expect the GPU to be the limit before the CPU is, and expect that limit to land well inside playable territory at 1080p.

The one hardware caveat is the 8 GB VRAM ceiling. Modern shooters with high-resolution texture packs can brush against 8 GB at 1440p with everything maxed. On the Steam Machine you'll want to keep texture pools sane and lean on upscaling rather than pushing native 1440p ultra. This is the same VRAM story you'll see across most 2025-2026 releases on this class of device — see our methodology for how we weigh the 8 GB ceiling.

The real question: anti-cheat on SteamOS

Here's where a competitive online FPS gets interesting on a SteamOS console. The Steam Machine runs games through Proton, not native Windows. Most single-player and co-op titles run fine. The friction point for multiplayer shooters is the kernel-level or service-level anti-cheat they ship with.

Anti-cheat compatibility on SteamOS comes down to whether the developer enables Proton support for their chosen solution — typically Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) or BattlEye, both of which can be flipped on for Linux/Proton, but only if the studio chooses to. When they do, the game just works on the Steam Machine and the Steam Deck. When they don't, the game launches to a menu and then boots you the moment matchmaking starts — or refuses to launch online at all.

So the verdict for Marathon is genuinely conditional:

• If Bungie enables Proton support for its anti-cheat: the Steam Machine should handle Marathon comfortably at 1080p, likely with FSR doing some of the work. This is the good outcome and the one we'd bet on, given Valve's device push and Bungie's history of broad platform support.
• If Bungie does not enable Proton anti-cheat: Marathon will not be playable online on the Steam Machine, full stop, regardless of how strong the GPU is. There is no user-side workaround for a server-side anti-cheat block.

This is the single biggest unknown, and it's not something hardware specs can answer. It's a business and support decision on Bungie's side. Until it's confirmed, treat any "it runs great" claim — including an optimistic one — with caution.

Realistic settings outlook (estimated)

Assuming anti-cheat clears, here's the shape we'd expect on the Steam Machine. These are estimates derived from the hardware class, not measured results.

• Resolution: 1080p as your home base. This is the Machine's honest target, and for a twitch shooter you want frames over pixels.
• Upscaling: FSR in Quality or Balanced mode. On a 1080p panel, FSR Quality is a sensible default; if you're on a 1440p TV, FSR Balanced upscaling to 1440p is the move rather than native 1440p.
• Settings preset: High, not Ultra. In competitive shooters the jump from High to Ultra costs frames and buys you visual noise you'll never notice mid-fight.
• VRAM-sensitive options: Keep textures at High rather than the absolute top tier, and turn off or lower any "high-res texture streaming" option if Marathon ships one. That's your 8 GB insurance.
• Frame target: Aim for a stable cap your panel can hold rather than chasing an uncapped number. A locked, consistent frame rate feels better in an extraction shooter than a jittery higher average.

Don't expect native 4K. Nothing in this class does native-4K on a demanding 2026 shooter, and chasing it on the Steam Machine just trades responsiveness for resolution you don't need on a couch.

How to follow for the measured verdict

We'll update this page with measured numbers the moment Marathon is testable on the Steam Machine — including whether anti-cheat actually clears Proton, real frame ranges at 1080p and 1440p+FSR, and the specific settings that hold a stable frame rate.

In the meantime, the practical move is to watch the game's SteamOS/Steam Deck compatibility status, since the Steam Machine inherits the same Proton and anti-cheat behavior. If Marathon shows as Verified or Playable on Deck, that's your strongest early signal it'll run on the Machine. You can also cross-reference how similar online shooters land in our games coverage and our best Steam Machine games list once it's populated.