Marathon looks miles ahead of Arc Raiders in one key area: "Anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing Marathon forever, no second chances"

Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios is slowly building a reputation for being soft on cheaters after promising action but seemingly preferring to hand out polite warnings. But Bungie, whose PvPvE extraction shooter Marathon launches March 5, already doesn't have time for that.

The Destiny 2 studio discusses its plan for Marathon cheaters in a new post on its website, and I'll tell you right now, people, it's not soft. In short, "Anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing Marathon forever, no second chances," writes Bungie.

The studio says, "No network or security model can guarantee perfection, but we are committed to protecting the Marathon competitive experience and ensuring everyone has their fair chance at exfiltrating with a backpack full of sweet loot."

Bungie is committing to providing "a layer of protection against cheating" with its Marathon dedicated servers, which "carefully tracks each bullet to its target."

That's in addition to extra layers of protection like a totally rebuilt game security stack and a system called "Fog of War," which "limits the regions of a map that individual player clients have knowledge of, limiting the effectiveness of 'wall hacks,' 'ESP cheats,' and 'loot revealers.'"

"We are taking a strong stance against cheating," in case that wasn't already obvious, says Bungie. All of its "security tools" will be active during the Marathon Server Slam beginning February 26, but the studio nonetheless implores you to report "foul play" if you encounter it.

Arc Raiders streamer who helped popularize notorious dupe exploit says "oopsies" after getting off with a light warning, leaving fans to question if Embark is serious about fair play.