'No Second Chances': Marathon Cheaters Will Be Banned Forever, Bungie Says 1

Bungie is on the verge of launching its latest game, Marathon — an extraction multiplayer shooter based on the studio's old series.

Releasing on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S on 5th March 2026, the sci-fi FPS is just over a week away, and the team has shared a blog post highlighting its efforts regarding network and security measures.

Most notably, Bungie has strong words for cheaters. "Anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing Marathon forever, no second chances," it says.

Further into the blog post, it elaborates on this a little bit.

"We are taking a strong stance against cheating and anyone found to be cheating or developing cheats will be permanently banned from playing Marathon forever, no second chances. That said, no system is perfect so we will have an appeals system to monitor for any issues in detection."

Elsewhere in the post, Bungie explains that the game's dedicated servers are "fully authoritative over movement, shooting, actions, and inventory".

What that means is the servers will reject invalid input from players without impacting anyone else. The idea is to prevent unauthorised actions like "teleporting, unlimited ammo, or damage manipulation".

It sounds like Bungie has put a lot in place to ensure Marathon is a smooth and fair experience.

We'll be able to put it to the test very soon in the game's Server Slam, which runs from 26th February to 2nd March.

Are you excited to hop into Marathon? Are you encouraged by Bungie's stance on cheating? Tell us in the comments section below.

[source bungie.net, via reddit.com]