Marathon targets another Arc Raiders weakness, boldly stating that cheaters will be "permabanned" with "no second chances"

Bungie's flipping of gamers' perceptions of Marathon needs to be studied. Sure, some massively more polished gameplay has gone a long way into changing the narrative, but so too has the way in which it's targeted some of players' biggest critiques of extraction shooter juggernaut Arc Raiders. I personally adore Embark's game, and I think the two will be able to coexist, but Bungie has really drummed up support (especially from hardcore shooter fans) by exposing some of Arc Raiders' weaknesses. The Marathon team is at it again, today confirming that cheaters will not be given second chances and will be banned from the game "forever" if they're caught. There's also some interesting anti-cheat tech under the hood, including a player client "fog of war" that can reduce the efficacy of wall hacks and loot-scanning cheats.

One of the toughest challenges for any competitive multiplayer game is to prevent the inevitable flood of cheaters. I've never been able to wrap my head around why people do it, but hey, they do so in their thousands. There's been a lot of conversation about cheaters in Arc Raiders recently, with many players feeling like Embark is being too lenient with bad actors and those that rinse in-game exploits. To prove it was taking the matter seriously, the studio recently rolled out a new punishment pathway for people caught cheating. You'll get banned for 30 days for your first offence, 60 days for your second, and permanently for your third. However, many still think this doesn't go far enough.

Marathon is clearly trying to appeal to those people with a more aggressive, strict approach. Bungie has just announced what it's doing to ensure cheaters make as small a dent on the experience as possible, and I'm really impressed with what I'm reading.

First, it bigs up its dedicated servers, which host all of the key aspects of the gameplay: "movement, shooting, actions, and inventory." Not only should this lead to satisfying gunplay in terms of hit registration, but also means that "invalid client actions will be rejected without impacting other players' experiences. This protects the gameplay experience against exploits such as teleporting, unlimited ammo, or damage manipulation." Marathon's server tech will also allow players that disconnect from a match to rejoin if it's still in progress, and if you're booted out due to a Bungie error, it will "attempt to return the starting gear" you equipped for your run.

The fog of war, meanwhile, "runs on the game server to limit the regions of a map that players have knowledge of, based on what they should be able to sense in their surroundings." This does not affect your perception of the world from a player perspective, just to be clear. Bungie says this will help mask your location from other players' clients, meaning common cheats like wall hacks will be less effective.

Hopefully, such cheats will be detected quickly anyway, with beefed-up BattleEye security systems that feature both "user-mode and kernel-mode components." If any cheats evade this initial layer of protection, Bungie says it has security analysts on hand to review any anomalous, suspicious data. "Even if you see something suspect slip through in the moment, we may catch [cheaters] later after a deeper dive in the data and issue a ban accordingly."

So, a really robust system then. But the real snipe at Arc Raiders comes with the confirmation that there is a zero-tolerance approach to cheating. "Anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing Marathon forever, no second chances," Bungie says.

From targeting Arc Raiders' disappointing, AI-assisted voice lines with a star-studded cast, to promising a more hardcore and intense experience for PvP enjoyers, to now taking a very firm stance against cheating, Marathon is doing a lot of the right things if it wants to lure players away from Embark's extraction shooter. Will Marathon be bigger than Arc Raiders? No, I really don't think it will be. But I've been really impressed with how Bungie has recently painted the game in a better light and decided to invest in the few specific areas where Embark has fallen short.