Banned macOS & Linux players of 'Marvel Rivals' have been given a reprieve

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AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 5

"Marvel Rivals" developer NetEase will reverse 100-year bans imposed on players who used emulation software to play the game on Mac and other platforms.

Six superheroes in dynamic poses stand behind the Marvel Rivals logo, with a blurred background depicting motion and light.
Mac and Linux users can soon play Marvel Rivals via emulation without risk. Image Credit: Marvel/NetEase Games
Marvel Rivals

features an anti-cheat system similar to that on other popular Windows games. Such tools can get removed or disabled as part of the process of porting games to a new platform.

NetEase, the developer of the game, announced that it would be reversing the bans in a future update. The announcement was made on a Discord server.

Players were banned because the game misinterpreted attempts to run the software on currently unsupported platforms like macOS, Steam Deck, and Linux using Windows emulation software as "cheating." It then imposed 100-year bans on players.

Marvel Rivals is natively compatible with Windows PCs, the Sony PlayStation 5, and Microsoft's Xbox Series S and X consoles.

The bans caused considerable outcry and bad publicity for the new title. Would-be players on other platforms were simply using emulation software such as Parallels or Proton on Linux in order to play the game.

CodeWeavers CEO James Ramey directly contacted NetEase to complain about the restriction on running the game on alternate platforms. CodeWeavers makes a Windows emulation environment called Crossover that is designed to help macOS, ChromeOS, and Linux users run Windows software.

Until changes are made to the game itself, players could still find themselves notified of a ban for "cheating" by the game. NetEase will reverse the bans when notified by players until it can modify the game's security mechanisms through an update.



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,471member
    Good and responsive.
    would have better to think of how cheat stoppers and emulation would work in the first place, but still
    Alex1Nwatto_cobra
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 5
    9secondkox29secondkox2 Posts: 3,657member
    hurting players simply because they want to play your game? who cares what OS it's on. Glad it's been recognized as an error and is beign sorted. 
    edited January 4
    watto_cobra
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 5
    22july201322july2013 Posts: 3,840member
    A 100 year ban for doing something that is normally permissible behaviour is extremely punitive and excessive, especially when the problem was that their own anti-cheat software wasn't functioning correctly under emulation. 100 years? Not even murderers get that length of punishment.
    watto_cobra
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 5
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,584moderator
    hurting players simply because they want to play your game? who cares what OS it's on.
    It's due to these being competitive multiplayer games. Cheating ruins the game as it affects the rankings:



    They use anti-cheat software that tries to make sure there's no other software modifying the game to allow things like auto-aim and shooting through walls. When the game is run through compatibility software, either the anti-cheat isn't running or the software is being modified at a lower level in order to run, which looks like it's using cheats.

    This is why a lot of these games don't get native ports as it's harder on some systems to run anti-cheat code at such a low level (kernel-level). There should be a way to tackle this at the OS level for all games though the same way video DRM is handled.

    The OS can ensure that all of the memory used by an app isn't modified by another app at runtime, possibly using encrypted memory containers. To ensure the binary isn't modified on disk, they verify a hash of the files. In the rare case the methods are bypassed, they can review the player's activity online. It shouldn't need a custom kernel-level driver to verify software integrity, the OS provider should be able to guarantee this.

    Maybe a sandboxed area of the OS that behaves like mobile operating systems would be an option and protected games run inside the sandbox. This would have an inaccessible filesystem.
    watto_cobraroundaboutnowchasm
     1Like 0Dislikes 2Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 5
    Adizxadizx Posts: 1member
    Glad to see some coverage on the issue, sharing some details to raise further problems. The issues with game support are way more severe than ppl think in above comments...
    1. The system by default bans everyone for 100 years. At first the UI had a bug, where it shown only last 2 digits (24) instead of 2124 in-game. They fixed that after a month, where I flagged the issue like 5 times.
    2. They recommend everyone falsely banned to contact the support. However, there is no true Customer Support system. They use a Discord bot. The in-game ban prompt has a button to contact support, which redirects to the Discord server invite. You need to have a Discord account, know how to use Discord, and find a specific channel with instructions how to find the customer support bot. This alone might be a big barrier for non-tech-savy people to flag issues, possibly making the affected cohort look way smaller than it truly is.
    3. There is no other way to contact support like email, etc.
    4. The game TOS explicitly mentions that refunds are not possible for virtual currency. If you buy a pass, or skin, or spent $1k it does not matter, you can be perma-banned. IMO it looks like a true scam.
    5. After many pings, information requests and attempts to contact the Discord Community Manager, there are still no explanations how the anti-cheat works, how the support bot works, nothing. I am completely ignored on all channels for a ~1 month already.
    6. The Discord support bot is so terrible I did not heard about ANYONE who made any successful contact attempts. I've complained on the Discord channel about the issue, even linked a list of my conversations with support here: https://pastebin.com/Qj0eQEjL
    7. I had a suspicion they might use some AI chatbot software for the support bot. You can check the above pastebin link to see some examples, most of the replies are completely without context, does not answer anything and look liek generic template messages or terrible offshore support without any english understanding capabilities.
    8. I have even sent a nonsense ChatGPT prompt hacking message, the support still replied with a generic prompt asking for more details. A true human would reply they don't understand, AI would not and hallucinate some response. OFC the latter happened here.
    9. Also how the bot works is unclear. There are no ticket aggregation, no IDs/references, nothing. Almost all my attempts were 1 my message and 1 reply with immediate question for feedback (meaning the "ticket" was closed). The exception was the last message I've sent ~1/4/25, where I had a human-looking interaction with 2 messages, and a reply next day with feedback prompt after.
    10. They do not share any details what the user was banned for, just a generic `Cheating`. Even when contacting "support" they do not share any details. Just a generic response that they will contact the anti-cheating department, then reply that they found a "suspicious" activity and cannot unban.
    11. There are more issues related to the game, like latest popular videos of a streamer Asmongold, who popularized info how bad the in-game chat censorship is. It basically blocks averything that inconvenient for Chinese government.
    12. Also there is a public game-support channel on Discord (which seems to be completely ignored by the Management, we did not receive any reply there after multiple pings). It has slow-roll mode enabled (i.e. you can send 1 message every 2 min), but also has some unclear message filtering system, which blocks the message if found any blacklisted word. Ofc it does not inform what word was the issue, yet still counts for the slow-roll mode. Yesterday I had to spent 15-20 minutes trying to send 1 message avoiding the filters, without a success. That's why I created another pastebin with my "rant": https://pastebin.com/TRWXEDse
    13. Support is so bad most of the people started sharing my suspicions, constantly writing complaints about the AI chatbot experience. I was not able to validate that. However, Community Managers are ignoring these discussions as well, possibly letting the potential disinformation share more and more.
    14. My last concern is lack of clarity how the bans are assigned. Are bans for cheating given only on the basis of the anti-cheat background scan system? Or maybe if multiple people reports you in-game due to the win-streak you could be 100yrs perma-banend as well? What's the guarantee that some pro player won't be perma-banned? Or some random player after 2000h in-game? Asked about that as well, still no response.
    15. There were also some concerns about the anti-cheat itself, how it works, what privileges do it have etc. There are some Reddit posts worrying if it have kernel-level access. Again, the developers let the disinformation share rather than claryfing anything.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
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