Marvel Rivals’ Biggest Cheating Problem Isn’t What You’d Expect

Players will always exploit competitive games, with Marvel Rivals experiencing aimbots, wall hacks, and all your standard exploits that plague the genre. However, the popularity of this hero shooter has invited greater stages of voluntary manipulation of its match, with unsettling levels of coordination. Despite heavy corrections already taking place, the depth of this issue may be too widespread for it to be meaningfully impacted.

Reporting systems already exist heavily in Marvel Rivals, punishing players for “throwing,” or intentionally losing matches for themselves and the rest of their team. These features extend to banning players for using exploits, but no anti-cheat methods are perfect. Similar to how ARC Raiders deals with a massive cheating population, Marvel Rivals has to deal with these type of players on a larger scale than most games, leading to a diverse number of unique problems that can be difficult to solve.

Marvel Rivals Has Seen The Rise Of Bounty Systems For Players In Competitive Modes

“Bounty Systems” are the latest form of cheating in Marvel Rivals, where players can target others to deliberately cause them to lose their matches in competitive modes. Known as a form of incentivized throwing, third party websites create bounties on specific players, encouraging players on their team to lose games on purpose. This includes intentionally getting their character eliminated over and over, to the point where matches can become 6v5, 6v4, or even 6v3 affairs depending on how many players pursue a bounty.

This toxic system allegedly started as a way to target players who were already being malicious in the community, either through griefing or throwing, ironically enough. However, as time has gone on, the bounty systems have instead gone to target streamers or other high-profile figures in the Marvel Rivals community, deliberately derailing their games in vindictive affairs. Players who find themselves on a team with someone who has a bounty on them might see a teammate become useless, all in favor of earning a score of money paid out by a third-party site.

Season 6 of Marvel Rivals has seen the quickest rise of these systems, partly due to player frustrations surrounding balance regarding the hero shooter following Elsa Bloodstone’s release. However, this harmful environment has been festering for quite some time, as Marvel Rivals‘ wide community has gained a reputation for being toxic and uninviting for new players ever since the honeymoon phase for the live service title ended. Much like Overwatch before it, Marvel Rivals‘ player base has not always been the kindest.

Players Would Pay Others Through Third-Party Sources To Intentionally Lose Matches

These act of sabotage are becoming more and more widespread as bounty sites offer larger sums of money for throwing matches intentionally. According to many, players who take a bounty and deliver upon it successfully receive upward to 80% of the original bounty, while the website who offered it gets 20%. This disturbing trend has seen many websites crop up through promotional posts on social media sites like X, only to be taken down or replaced after they get reported.

This had led to situations where both teams during a match both had multiple players pursuing a bounty, causing 3 to 5 players all intentionally dying for the sake of small payouts. Some players who are throwing for a bounty would go out of the way to stop players on the other team for dying for another bounty, leading to a constant back-and-forth of terrible behavior that wasted everyone else’s time. The biggest site for bounties has been shut down, but a Discord channel apparently still offers large sums for targets as of this time of writing.

Developers Have Cracked Down On Incentivized Throwing Harshly Following Mass Reports

On March 6, 2026, Marvel Rivals put out an official statement regarding incentivized throwing and the bounty systems in place, condemning it without exception. According to the statement, the developers would have a “zero tolerance policy” regarding bounty systems, as they harm the integrity of competitive matches and tarnish the experience of them for “honest” players. To respond to the growth of these systems, Marvel Rivals will be making a specialized investigation protocol that identifies and addresses any gameplay connected to bounties of any kind.

Enhanced regulations and a general warning toward players who participate in third-party bounties followed this mission statement, delivering a strong message to players. The promise of permanent bans towards players who participate in bounties seem to be paired with other significant penalties, targeting those who remain idle or deliberatly throw at various points in a match. By encouraging players to report these type of players more, it is possible for Marvel Rivals to not make the mistake of allowing this form of cheating for too long.

It is unclear whether this crackdown on cheating within the hero shooter will cause the bounty systems to be removed entirely from the game. However, with a swift response from Marvel Rivals‘ team, hopefully Season 7 and beyond can see this strange form of exploitation diminish significantly as more content is added to the game.

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