Anyone who cheats in Marathon will be permabanned without a second chance

Not all heroes wear capes; some just carry a hammer. If you cheat in Marathon, you will be permanently banned from the game. No second chances.

In a recent blog post from Bungie, developers discussed what they are doing to fight against the ongoing cheating epidemic in shooters right now. With gamers enraged by Embark Studio’s three-strike cheating rule in ARC Raiders, Marathon’s stricter policies have been met with praise.

“Tau Ceti IV is a dangerous world where death is certain,” Bungie wrote. “That said, we want you to know your deaths are due to your own mistakes or enemy outplays — not because your run was compromised by network issues, cheaters, or the hardware hosting your connection to the world.”

How Bungie is fighting cheaters in Marathon

First, Marathon will have a dedicated server that will reject invalid client actions, helping protect other players in a match from things like teleporting, unlimited ammo, and damage manipulation. Meanwhile, the server authority model ensures the client’s movements and actions “feel immediate and responsive.”

A Fog of War system will run on the game server to limit how many regions of a map players can see. This is based on what they should be able to see in a normal setting, keeping player positions hidden on other players’ clients. This will reduce the effectiveness of wall hacks and other cheats.

On top of these server-side security measures, Marathon also has client-side security software and other improvements.

Devs added: “Game security is a never-ending arms war with bad actors. This means sharing details about methodologies for protecting our games can inform those bad actors how to defeat them. With that in mind, we hope this high-level snapshot gives you an idea of how we are addressing client security.”

Perhaps most importantly, anyone found cheating in Marathon will be permabanned immediately. There are no second chances, the devs warned.

The immediate response from the gaming community was to applaud Marathon’s devs for being strict on cheaters. However, others said this should be the standard, wondering why games like ARC Raiders haven’t adopted the same rules.