Marvel Rivals has been going through something of a rough patch, what with the frustrating lack of good balance patches and now a whole website dedicated to basically making the game worse for everyone involved.
Named ‘incentivised throwing’, this phenomenon saw a website and Discord being used to place bounties on people’s heads. Players would then throw games to collect the money, and the website would take a portion of that reward. It got real weird, real quick.
Luckily, NetEase has since stepped in, reassuring players it would take action against this by upping the penalties for throwing games. It has also now implemented a “Victim Compensation Protocol” for all players who have been affected by match throwing, even if they weren’t the intended target.
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“To preserve match integrity, we’re introducing the Victim Compensation Protocol,” NetEase says in an official social media post. “If your match loss and point deduction were caused by a teammate’s confirmed malicious behaviour, the system will automatically restore lost points. You’ll receive an in-game mail notification once compensation has been issued.”
The devs have also deployed a new and improved detection system for foul play: “This system uses a combination of big data analysis and manual review to enhance the detection of malicious throwing behaviour. Once violations are confirmed, offending accounts will face strict additional penalties.” This is all very good news for anyone who has lost out on comp points thanks to someone throwing themselves off the side of the map for a bounty.
Dear Rivals,Since the launch of our crackdown on “Incentivized Throwing” (malicious match-losing for personal gain), we’ve received an overwhelming amount of feedback and suggestions from the community. Thank you for each point of passionate feedback! Our team is ready to roll…March 8, 2026
But I have a feeling the incentivised throwing epidemic will be over even sooner now that the website that started all of this has taken the bounty system down, replacing it with a portal where players can simply report players who throw (via GamesRadar).
Although this still isn’t great news, because I doubt the reporting will stick to those who actually throw: like the bounty list, it may also transition into a burn book of players people simply dislike. And we all know the internet would never take people’s details and use them to take things too far.
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