As Marathon faces the kind of cheat users Destiny 2 fans know all too well, Bungie promises "we have a zero-tolerance policy" and that anti-cheat improvements are on the way

Bungie has acknowledged the influx of cheaters in Marathon and says it's expanding its efforts in order to better quell the issue.

Since Marathon launched last month, it swiftly faced the same problem as almost every online game in this day and age: rampant cheating. This has caused criticism from the community, including Destiny 2 streamer GernaderJake, who says: "Apparently, high ranked lobbies are just filled with blatant cheaters. It's almost a guarantee you'll match them. How is Bungie so quick with all the nerfs and changes, but they are just silently allowing these cheaters to go crazy week after week?"

In a new post on Twitter, the Marathon development team says: "We've seen the conversation about cheaters, toxicity, and competitive integrity in Marathon." It adds: "We have a zero-tolerance policy around cheating. We're actively banning confirmed cheaters and expanding our telemetry and detection methods to better catch the aforementioned cheaters. Some of this work is live already, and more improvements will roll out over the coming weeks."

Bungie explains, "Anti-cheat is a continuous cycle of monitoring, improving, and responding. This is an area that we will continue to invest in to protect the integrity of your runs." The post continues by confirming that the tools to report cheating will also be expanded with the likes of in-game mailbox messages "so that when a report you filed leads to action, we can follow-up and let you know."

The studio is no stranger to cheaters thanks to Destiny 2, but hopefully its approach to them is better than when it just asked people to admit to cheating.

Of course, cheaters are inevitable in almost any competitive online game (and in non-competitive ones too, given Megabonk's leaderboards had to be wiped), and it's a problem that is never going to fully go away. But hopefully Bungie's new claim isn't smoke and mirrors, and the developer dedicates a significant effort to tackling the issue, otherwise Marathon's woes are bound to get even worse.

"Marathon is gonna be Game of the Year," actor Ben Starr says, because it has Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 award magnet Jennifer English.