Marathon cheaters will be permanently banned by Bungie

2 hours ago 5

Published Feb 23, 2026, 12:49 PM EST

No second chances

Bungie has announced that anyone found cheating in Marathon "will be permanently banned forever, no second chances."

Titled "networking and security," Bungie's official blog post details plenty of insight into how the upcoming extraction shooter will work from a technical standpoint, but the fact cheaters will immediately face the full wrath of the banhammer is refreshing. This is in contrast to Embark Studios, which uses a three-strikes system for its popular exctraction shooter Arc Raiders. First offenders are banned for 30 days, second time around it's 60 days, followed by a permanent ban for those who attempt to cheat thrice.

When asked for clarification on X, the official Marathon account reiterated the same line in the blog post. However, Bungie hasn't clarified whether a permanent ban means the offender will only have their account banned, or whether it will be a more damaging hardware or IP address ban.

"The world of Tau Ceti IV is a dangerous place," explained Marathon engineering director Eamon McKenzie in a short 30-second video. "You should either be dying because Tau Ceti IV and other players got you, or that you made a bad decision. These are the things we have to get right if we're making a game in this genre. It's non-negotiable."

Chris Butcher, technical director, followed that up: "You want to know that it's a level playing field. All of the information that you're getting needs to be precise and accurate."

Other highlights from the blog post include how Marathon uses a server-side fog of war mechanic to help "keep gameplay secure from exploits that reveal the location of items or the contents of containers," aka "wall hacks" or "ESP cheats." Popular anticheat service, BattlEye, is also used.

The team is also confident that "players with a good internet connection can't be shot behind cover" — one of the biggest gripes many players have in modern online FPS games — thanks to the "new high-performance networking model" included with the game's dedicated servers.

Finally, Bungie confirmed that if you lose your connection in the middle of the run, reconnecting and continuing the same run is possible. If that doesn't happen due to the game's servers or network infrastructure having issues, players will get back the gear they started the run with. Nice.

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