Some core players of “Marathon” and the live broadcast circle are complaining: the game is suspected of having serious cheating problems. For ordinary players, it may not be easy to encounter abnormalities in every game; but in high-risk areas such as ranked matches or the frozen archives of the final map, “equipment taken away by unfair matches” caused by cheats will become particularly glaring.
After playing 7 games in a row, I was obviously cheated in 3 games, so I just said I would stop playing.
A popular live broadcaster posted a message saying that he suffered from obvious cheating in a ranked match that night. The overall experience was so bad that he did not want to do it again. He even said that he might stop making “Marathon” content and return his focus to works such as “Apex Legends (Apex Legends/Apex Legends)”. The reason why such statements are lethal is that those who retreat are not just casual players, but content creators who can drive topics and active communities.
Preview through walls and make unreasonable hits in restricted sight areas
The behaviors alleged by players include: the opponent can shoot in advance behind the wall, and shoot unreasonably accurately under the cover of fog or jammers. To make matters worse, some people believe that some cheaters seem to have persisted in high-end games for a long time, which means that the speed of disposal and bans may not keep up with the proliferation of cheats.
Some high-end players bluntly said that there are so many cheats in high-ranking games that they are guaranteed to be available. At the same time, cheaters will also carry out sniper-style matching and harassment against live broadcast hosts, extending the problem from competitive fairness to the social environment; this is why players are demanding not just account bans, but a whole set of smoother and more effective reporting and handling systems.
There needs to be more intuitive reporting, immediate reward after death, and even a compensation mechanism.
Some players directly called for “Marathon” to need an “equipment return/compensation” system, because the pain point of evacuation shooting is that “you lose not just one round, but your entire trip.” In addition, players also hope that the reporting process will not be so complicated: there is no need to go back to the main menu, scroll to recent players, and then slowly click on the report, but it can be completed quickly at death or settlement.
Bungie: Will strengthen detection, but will not clear it overnight in the short term
In response to this wave of outcry, Bungie stated that it will expand telemetry and detection methods to catch cheaters, and continue to iterate the reporting process to make it easier for players to flag suspected cheaters and inappropriate behavior. Long-term directions also include investing in better voice chat management and exploring in-game protections for sniper streamers, such as name privacy. However, these measures will hardly make cheating disappear immediately. They can only prove that the official is at least aware of the problem and has begun to deal with it.
The biggest fear in evacuation shooting is not losing, but losing unfairly.
“Marathon” already has greater challenges in terms of retention and player health; if the endgame area is still out of control due to cheats, it will only let the group of people who are willing to invest for the long term leave first. Once the trust in retreat shooting is broken, it is often harder to come back than to repair it.