'Marvel Rivals' Players Are Exploiting a Cheat That Lets Them End Matches Without Penalties

3 hours ago 6

Published Aug 17, 2026, 10:27 AM EDT

It’s probably best to stay clear of ranked until this gets fixed

Black Widow in Marvel Rivals Image: NetEase Games

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If Marvel Rivals’ ranked mode wasn’t already a nightmare, cheaters have recently made it much worse. Players have discovered a way to quit matches without receiving a penalty. “People are intentionally abusing the cheating detection system to cancel games with no consequence when they are losing,” LytePK posted on X. “This has happened to me 5X on stream today alone.”

When a player edits Marvel Rivals’ config files during a match, the game interprets this as cheating and abruptly ends the bout. Before editing the config file, they briefly exit the game, then return after moving the altered config into a new folder. However, it seems that the cheaters are currently going unpunished, making this method an easy way to avoid losing imaginary ranked points when getting crushed.

Editing Marvel Rivals’ config files has become somewhat common for largely innocuous reasons, as it lets players circumvent some of the game’s performance issues on PC by tweaking technical details that aren't surfaced by the game's menus. On the more controversial side, others have been tinkering with these files to remove certain visual effects, like fog, to gain a competitive advantage. Others have disabled “mouse smoothing” to make mouse movements more 1:1.

A few months ago, NetEase added a warning message for those altering config files, but the company doesn’t appear to have enforced the issue with bans. This new exploit to end matches without penalty will likely prompt a more draconian response toward players who are editing these files. Hopefully, NetEase delivers the best of both worlds. They need to ensure players aren't ending matches without penalty, while adding more in-game options to help those struggling with performance issues or weird gameplay defaults.

Marvel Rivals recently kicked off Season 9.5 with The Hood, a tank character with guns. NetEase has consistently updated its hero shooter with a new character nearly every month, something that has kept the game fresh (and often very unbalanced).

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