Marvel Rivals makers NetEase have made their stance on cheating in the popular shooter abundantly clear in the studio's latest blog post, where it not only squashes rumours revolving the game's anti-cheat software but names (without directly doxing) and shames hundreds players who were caught using and distributing cheats, each of them also being permanently banned from the game.

Following a recent weekend update, NetEase found that "a faction of rogue players began promoting and deploying unauthorized third-party enhancements," or 'cheats,' in layman's terms. The team moved to conduct an investigation and found hundreds of accounts violating the studio's "primary directive" of creating "a fair and honorable arena."

Once it tracked down those accounts found cheating, not only were they permanently banned, but NetEase has made it clear that moving forward, any account caught and verified using "cheats, illicit assist programs, or client tampering" will also be permanently banned.

After stressing that players should, of course, not cheat in Marvel Rivals, NetEase also put an end to rumours that the game's anti-cheat system can be bypassed through launch parameters. It claimed those rumours are "completely false," writing, "Our anti-cheat launches concurrently with the game client and cannot be disabled independently. The parameter in question merely hides the pop-up window; it does not deactivate the anti-cheat software in any capacity."

Unless you're one of the hundreds of cheaters banned, this entire blog post is undeniably a hilarious account of events. Firstly, the fact that players believed they were disabling anti-cheat software by adjusting launch parameters when they were just disabling a pop-up window is funny on its own.

But what's even funnier is the fact that when you go through the blog post, which contains a massive list of permanently banned accounts and their ranks (with their usernames mostly censored as to not dox anyone), the largest group of players banned are Bronze players. That means even while using cheats, these players couldn't get out of the game's lowest ranking.

Only three banned players actually achieved the game's top rank, One Above All, with the next largest group being Grandmaster and Diamond players, both with 65 players each. There were 184 Bronze players listed who were banned.

Yes, there's no way of knowing how long those players had to play before they were banned, and yes, they could all have just been new accounts players made to avoid their main accounts getting the ban-hammer. But cheating in a PvP online video game is embarrassing in the first place, and having your account get banned without even accomplishing the imaginary clout points these cheats are supposed to help you achieve makes it even more embarrassing.

Also, it's not like just making a new account spares you from getting caught. NetEase will go as far as IP and hardware bans if you're verified to be a repeat offender. Makes you think that, instead of trying to jump through a million continuous hoops to cheat at an online game, perhaps it would be more fun to just, play it yourself and practice if you want to get a higher rank? A wild thought, apparently, for the 488 players listed by NetEase.

Marvel Rivals also joins Apex Legends and Marathon as online PvP multiplayer games that have made it clear that cheaters will be permanently banned.

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