Bungie is drawing a hard line in Marathon, and this time the focus goes beyond the people running cheats in raids. The studio is going after the services that sell them, specifically account recovery and boosting operations that have quietly become one of the biggest sources of cheating in the game.
In Brief
- Bungie says boosting and account recovery services have a direct link to cheating in Marathon
- These services often steal player accounts and resell credentials to cheaters looking to dodge bans
- Using one will not protect you in an appeal, and Bungie warns your account and personal data are both at risk
Bungie Is Going After Boosting Services in Marathon
Bungie points out that boosting services frequently lean on cheats to push through as many paying customers as possible, because speed is the entire business model. So, that literally puts every account they touch at risk of a ban, and once an account is flagged, the service has no reason to keep it clean.
As such, those credentials get sold off to other bad actors, which lets cheaters build up a stockpile of accounts and keep evading bans long after the first one lands. Every account they collect is another one they can burn through while ruining matches for everyone else.
Your Account and Personal Data Are on the Line
Bungie also warns that the damage does not stop at a suspended account. Services like these have been caught harvesting and selling personal and financial information they stumble across along the way. A company willing to steal and resell accounts is not a company that treats your data carefully.
Chasing Cryo Archive Is Not Worth the Ban
Bungie understands the pull. Staking a claim over Cryo Archive and grabbing the achievement for killing the Compiler is a real flex, and not everyone has the time to earn it. But the studio was blunt about the outcome. If you pay someone to do it, you are funding the cheating problem and putting your own account in the firing line.
Telling Bungie your fingers were not on the keyboard when the cheating happened will not save you in an appeal. Bungie’s full banning policy is available on its official safety site.
