Marvel Rivals bring down the banhammer on hundreds of accounts

NetEase Games has announced a massive ban wave for unscurpulous Marvel Rivals players who were caught “deploying unauthorised third-party enhancements”. About 500 players have been permanently banned. To add insult to injury, portions of their names and account IDs have been revealed, so there’s a non-zero chance of at least one person finding out they got banned via a blog post. So, if you happened to stumble upon a cheater and reported them, now would be a good time to confirm if your actions resulted in consequences. 

Most of the players only have their accounts banned, meaning there’s nothing stopping them from creating a new account and starting over again. Most of them were in Bronze, the lowest bracket possible (surprise surprise). Four particularly egregious cheaters, on the other hand, have received a much harsher device ban. While not impossible to bypass, spoofing the serial number of components is not for everyone and can result in unforeseen consequences.

The developers have also dispelled rumours that Marvel Rivals’ anti-cheat system can be bypassed by manipulating launch parameters, calling them completely false. It merely bypassed a screen that notified users that anti-cheat was running, without disabling the anti-cheat itself. This may have inadvertently led players to falsely believe they could go ham without consequence.

NetEase’s approach to tackling cheaters is the diametric opposite of Riot, which boasted of reducing third-party DMA cards to paperweights. Unsurprisingly, it has resulted in virtually no backlash, with most players applauding NetEase for taking the trash out.