Bungie bans cheaters; Duos teased

Bungie is trying to calm two different Marathon fights at once: players in high-ranked matches say cheaters are showing up too often, and players who liked the two-person Duos test just watched that playlist get switched off on April 8 at 10 AM Pacific time. (thisweekinvideogames.com) (soren.com) On cheating, Bungie said on April 7 that Marathon has a “zero-tolerance policy,” that confirmed cheaters are already being banned, and that more detection changes will roll out over the coming weeks. (thisweekinvideogames.com) The complaints were not random grumbling from day-one lobbies. Reports clustered around Ranked mode and higher-skill brackets, with players saying the problem gets worse after Silver III, which is the point where a competitive ladder starts feeling less like quick play and more like a grind you can lose in one bad match. (thisweekinvideogames.com) Bungie’s answer is not just “we’re watching.” The studio said it is expanding telemetry, which is the game’s internal black box of match data, so it can spot suspicious behavior faster instead of waiting for clips to go viral. (thisweekinvideogames.com) It is also widening the reporting system around the match itself. Bungie said easier player reports, better harassment reporting, mailbox updates on past reports, stronger voice chat moderation, and protections against stream sniping are all in the works or already partly live. (thisweekinvideogames.com) That hard line matches what Bungie said in February 2026, when it told players that anyone caught cheating or developing cheats for Marathon would be permanently banned with no second chances. The April message matters because it says the bans are no longer just a warning on a blog post. (thisweekinvideogames.com) At the same time, Bungie is reshaping how people queue into Marathon. The Outpost Duos experiment ended on April 8, but Game Director Joe Ziegler said the test gathered enough data that Duos is planned to come back as a permanent queue in Season 2. (soren.com) (altchar.com) That is a bigger deal than it sounds, because Marathon launched with solos and three-player crews as its main ways to play. Duos sits in the middle: less chaotic than trios, less punishing than going in alone, and closer to how a lot of friends actually pair up online. (altchar.com) Bungie is not leaving a gap for long. A new experimental playlist is scheduled for April 15 at 10 AM Pacific time, and Bungie has framed these short tests as live data collection for bigger Season 2 changes. (soren.com) (altchar.com) Season 2 is also where Bungie is expected to fold in more than just queue changes. Reports tied to the April 8 update say the next season is set to include a permanent Duos queue, a new Runner, and a Nightmare version of Dire Marsh while the studio keeps tuning weapons like the Biotoxic Disinjector. (altchar.com) So the immediate picture is simple: Bungie is telling ranked players that anti-cheat enforcement is active now, and telling Duos players that the mode they just lost is being rebuilt into a permanent Season 2 feature instead of being shelved. (thisweekinvideogames.com) (soren.com) (altchar.com)