‘Marvel Rivals‘ developer NetEase Games announced on March 7 that it is going after the match-throwing problem that has been getting worse in ranked play. During Season 6.5, a third-party site called Intlist was offering cash bounties to players who were willing to throw specific matches.
It got bad enough that NetEase decided to upgrade its detection systems and go with a “strict zero-tolerance policy.” The studio says it is now using big data analysis and server-wide monitoring to catch throwers and AFK players in real time. Anyone found guilty is looking at a permanent ban.
NetEase Is Auto-Restoring Rank Points For Players Who Lost Matches Because Of Throwers
NetEase is also rolling out a Victim Compensation Protocol, which is the first time the game has had anything like this. If a match loss gets traced back to a teammate throwing on purpose, the rest of the team will have their lost rank points restored automatically. Meanwhile, Intlist has already shut down its paid bounty system and says it is moving to a free reporting tool instead. All bounties that were still active have reportedly been refunded.
The compensation system works through a mix of automated detection and manual reviews. Once NetEase confirms that a player was throwing or idling on purpose, everyone on that team who lost points gets them back. The manual review part means restorations will not always be immediate, but it is a significant change from how things were handled before, when players had no recourse at all after losing a match to a griefer.
Related: Marvel Rivals Bounty Website Lets Players Pay Others To Sabotage Ranked Matches
Intlist’s creator put out a statement saying they are “happy to see developers taking a stronger stance” on the problem. That is a strange thing to say, given that Intlist was the platform that turned match throwing into a paid service in the first place. Still, the site shutting down its bounty system and refunding users is at least a sign that the crackdown is having an effect.
NetEase Drops 2026 Roadmap That Leads Into The ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Release
On the content side, NetEase revealed a 2026 roadmap for ‘Marvel Rivals’ under the name “Path to Doomsday.” Starting in April, the game is going to have bi-monthly events tied to the ‘Avengers‘ film saga. The first event is a 1v6 asymmetrical mode where one player controls Loki with Infinity Stones. The events after that will cover Age of Ultron, Infinity War, and Endgame as the year goes on.
Everything is supposed to build toward a final update in December 2026, which lines up with the theatrical release of ‘Avengers: Doomsday.‘ That last update is expected to either make Doctor Doom a playable character or introduce him as a raid boss.
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Doom has been sitting in the game since launch as an unplayable villain, so players have been waiting for this one. NetEase is clearly timing their content around Marvel’s movie calendar, and December is going to be the test of whether that strategy actually pays off for the game’s player numbers.
