Players Who Cheat In Marathon Will Be Permanently Banned, Bungie States

Cheating is prevalent in competitive shooters. From "zimmers" in Overwatch to aimbotting and wallhacks in Rainbow Six: Siege, even the strongest restrictions to combat people from breaking the law in online play. Bungie is taking strict measures in the upcoming extraction shooter Marathon. In a short video titled "networking and security", the team explains their work on dedicated servers, server-side authority over actions to avoid unlimited ammo and players teleporting.

When it comes to cheating, Bungie is implementing a "one strike, you're out" policy. In the official blog's overview on Marathon's official site, they simply state "Anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing Marathon forever, no second chances."

"The world of Tau Ceti IV is a dangerous place," says Eamon McKenzie, Marathon's engineering director. "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."

When a user on social media asked if "no second chances = perma-gone?", the Marathon official account repeated the policy.

Bungie and Marathon have not clarified if this means an IP ban or a hardware ban. Some games issue temporary suspensions before enacting permanent bans, like Overwatch giving 3 temp bans, or blacklisting your hardware for suspicious activity, like Valorant. Perma-bans are fairly common in many games, and Bungie combated cheating in Destiny 2 aggressively. With BattlEye (a kernel-based anti-cheat system), they tripled their numbers on the amount of bans during peak play, which would be during higher stakes events and raids. BattlEye has also been used in Rainbow Six: Siege, Grand Theft Auto (Online), and ARK: Survival/Evolved Ascended. Chances are, it may be utilized in Marathon.

Marathon launches March 5th, 2026 for the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC (Steam).