Marathon developer Bungie has revealed that it is reviewing its policy with regards to taking action against players who bump into bugs. The move follows a player posting a video of themselves mowing down a squad of players after they managed to navigate their way out of bounds on Marathon’s Cryo Archive map. Though it’s currently unclear what sort of punishment, if any, the studio has in store for the offender, it has promised compensation for those affected by this incident.
Bugs are a normal part of every game, and most developers typically do a good job of squashing them over time. Some bugs are features (/s), while others, such as Crimson Desert’s focus dodge flight bug, end up becoming features (just in a considerably less broken way). However, in multiplayer games like Marathon, where certain exploits can be used to gain a significant competitive advantage, these coding foibles can go from mildly annoying to downright infuriating.
In this instance, the player in question found a crack in Cryo Archive’s geometry, giving them the drop on a team that had just completed the encounter in the Compiler room – they didn’t stand a chance. Bungie says the issue will be patched out “before Cryo Archive becomes available again,” so you won’t have to worry about runners in the walls going forward. The studio’s action doesn’t stop there, though.
“In the past, we have not taken action against players going out of bounds,” Bungie states, “but due to this case heavily affecting other players negatively, we’ll be reviewing our policies and sharing more details soon. While we don’t want to punish players for bugs that they run into by accident, we will communicate more clearly the line that players should not cross when it comes to using these sorts of bugs that could be griefing others.”
Since Marathon’s challenging Cryo Archives map arrived back in March, it seems like a new issue has had to have been patched out from it in almost every update. From players and items falling through the floor to exfil countdowns resetting if the first runner left the zone, to other out of bounds exploits that allowed runners to refund their gear once the run ended, it’s certainly been anything but a clean launch.
Hopefully, with this latest incident, we’ll see some firmer penalties come in for players that are caught taking advantage of these… idiosyncrasies. Bungie’s stance on not punishing players that accidentally fall foul to invisible floors is more than fair enough, but competitive integrity needs to be maintained, especially in a game like Marathon.
