NetEase Permabans Nearly 500 Marvel Rivals Cheaters, Most Stuck in Bronze

NetEase has made its position on cheating in Marvel Rivals unmistakably clear. In a recent blog post, the studio not only addressed swirling rumors about the game’s anti-cheat system but also publicly named (without fully exposing personal information) and shamed hundreds of players caught using or distributing cheats. Every single one of them has received a permanent ban from the game.

The crackdown followed a weekend update, when NetEase’s telemetry detected what it described as “a faction of rogue players” beginning to promote and deploy unauthorized third-party enhancements,cheats, in simpler terms. The team launched an investigation and uncovered hundreds of accounts that violated the studio’s “primary directive” of maintaining “a fair and honorable arena.” Once those accounts were confirmed as cheating, NetEase didn’t just issue temporary suspensions. The studio announced that, going forward, any account verified to be using “cheats, illicit assist programs, or client tampering” will be permanently banned.

The developer also put to rest a persistent rumor: that the game’s anti-cheat software could be bypassed through launch parameters. NetEase called those claims “completely false,” explaining, “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.” In other words, players who thought they were disabling the anti-cheat were only hiding a notification.

Unless you happen to be one of the banned cheaters, the blog post reads as a darkly humorous tale. The idea that players believed they could outsmart the system by tweaking a launch parameter,when all they did was hide a pop-up,is amusing on its own.

But the real punchline comes from the list of banned accounts. NetEase published a massive roster of permanently banned players, along with their in-game ranks, though usernames were mostly censored to avoid doxxing. The largest group of banned players? Bronze rank. That means even while using cheats, these players couldn’t escape the game’s lowest tier. Only three banned players had reached the top rank, One Above All. The next largest groups were Grandmaster and Diamond players, with 65 each. In total, 184 Bronze players were listed.

Sure, it’s impossible to know how long those players had been active before being caught, and yes, some could have been new accounts made to protect their mains. Still, cheating in a PvP online game is embarrassing enough. To be banned without even climbing the ranks,without achieving the imaginary prestige that cheats are supposed to unlock,makes it even more humiliating.

And creating a new account won’t save repeat offenders. NetEase has made it clear that it will go as far as IP and hardware bans for verified repeat cheaters. That raises a simple question: instead of jumping through endless hoops to cheat at an online game, wouldn’t it be more fun to just play it yourself and practice if you want a higher rank? Apparently, that thought never crossed the minds of the 488 players NetEase named.

Marvel Rivals now joins Apex Legends and Marathon on the growing list of online PvP games that have adopted a zero-tolerance policy for cheaters, with permanent bans as the standard punishment.