'No Second Chances' — Bungie Delivers Stern Warning to Potential Cheaters Before Marathon's Release

Bungie has sent a clear message to anyone considering cheating in Marathon: you'll face a permanent ban from the game with no opportunities for redemption. In a recent blog post, the Sony-owned studio emphasized that players caught cheating in its upcoming extraction shooter will be permanently barred from Marathon, reinforcing the 'no second chances' policy.

However, Bungie recognized that no system is flawless and has established an appeals process to address any potential detection errors. The studio stated, 'Tau Ceti IV is a perilous world where death is inevitable. We want to ensure that your deaths result from your own errors or being outplayed by opponents — not from network problems, cheaters, or hardware issues affecting your connection.'

Bungie is committed to safeguarding the competitive integrity of Marathon, aiming to give every player a fair shot at escaping with valuable loot. To combat cheating, Marathon will use dedicated servers that are 'fully authoritative' on critical combat and looting actions. Additionally, the 'Fog of War' system will restrict players' map knowledge to specific areas, reducing the impact of wall hacks, ESP cheats, and loot revealers.

The studio highlighted that product security is an ongoing challenge, noting, 'Game security is a continuous battle against malicious actors.' Bungie provided only a high-level overview of client security measures, which include both user-mode and kernel-mode components, to avoid giving cheaters insights into how to bypass them. Notably, the post did not mention the use of Secure Boot with TPM 2.0, a requirement for playing recent Call of Duty and Battlefield titles on PC.

Marathon's 'Server Slam' event is scheduled for February 26, during which all of Bungie's security tools will be active. Players are encouraged to report any cheaters they encounter. The full game launches on March 5 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S.

This security announcement comes as another extraction shooter, Arc Raiders, faces its own issues with cheaters, with developer Embark Studios also issuing strong statements on the matter.