Excitement around Marathon’s launch next week seems to finally be a thing, and this weekend’s “server slam” aims to convince extraction shooter enjoyers on the fence. Ahead of it, Bungie has outlined a frankly impressive effort regarding networking and security features that will be implemented from the get-go.

On 23rd February, the Sony-owned developer shared a meaty blog post that dives deep into what players can expect from the game’s many layers of security and key network features. Needless to say, all of them are crucial to ensuring a smooth and fair online experience, but it’s often that shooters targeting a competitive crowd don’t launch in a robust-enough state.

First, Bungie has made Marathon’s dedicated servers “fully authoritative on key combat and looting actions,” meaning any “correction” of suspicious behaviour won’t impact other players and their experience. It’s combined with “client-side prediction and rewind” to ensure actions feel immediate. Moreover, it’s promised that servers “carefully track each bullet to its target even with high packet loss.” Consistent hit registration at launch in an online shooter? Imagine that.

When it comes to wall hacks and other cheats that might reveal the position of key items and players, a Fog of War system limits the regions of a map that individual player clients have knowledge of. “It also helps keep your position hidden from other players’ clients.” This isn’t enough to guarantee full protection from hacks alone, but it’s part of the game’s arsenal to combat cheaters. On top of that, the security stack was rebuilt “from the ground up” for this game, and that will work alongside the familiar BattlEye solution.

There’s also the matter of one’s Internet connection going down mid-run. Each online game handles such events differently. In the case of Marathon, “you can reconnect and continue playing the run” like in other match-based shooters. “If connection recovery fails due to an issue with Bungie’s server or network infrastructure, we will attempt to return the starting gear to all impacted players.”

Perhaps the biggest shocker comes near the end of the list of features, where Bungie states “anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing Marathon forever.” Yeah, no second chances. So, make sure you’re not running anything suspicious while playing it.

In any case, the veteran online shooter developer, admits that “product security is never fully solved” and says it’ll continue to invest in systems and infrastructure for as long as the game stays alive.

As an extra, we now also have confirmation Xbox players will automatically get exclusive gun charms when the game releases on 5th March: