Today, Marvel Rivals launched its big mid-season update, adding two new characters, a fresh map, and some balance tweaks. But the developer behind the online character shooter also warned PC players to stop using a popular piece of software, as it believes it is “cheating.”
On February 21, just a few days after NetEase laid off American devs working on Marvel Rivals, the company published a short notice on the game’s official website about Blitz, a third-party overlay plugin that provides PC players with extra information not normally available in-game. These types of plugins are prominent in many PC games like League of Legends but are controversial as some online believe they give PC players an advantage in crossplay games like Fortnite and Marvel Rivals. And NetEase seems to agree, announcing on Friday that it would no longer allow players to use Blitz.
“Recently, we’ve seen the use of a third-party plugin known as Blitz,” said NetEase. “This program injects itself into our game process, giving users confidential information like damage and healing statistics. It allows players to selectively ban heroes, predict opponents’ ultimate abilities, and more, severely undermining the fairness of our game.”
NetEase further added: “We deem this program as cheating software and will no longer allow its use during gameplay.”
The studio behind Rivals says players who might have been using Blitz over the last few days don’t need to worry about being punished or penalized. But only if those players “refrain from using [Blitz] in future games.” So basically, consider this a warning. NetEase also “strongly” urged players to avoid using any PC third-party add-ons, overlays, or plugins when playing Marvel Rivals in order to “uphold justice in our gaming universe.”
In response to this, the company behind Blitz has “temporarily” paused all of its Marvel Rivals overlays and says its “working on ways to come back stronger.”
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