Marvel Rivals players are messing with their config files 'to cancel games with no consequence' before they get a loss

The devil works hard but cheaters in Marvel Rivals work harder, as always. Some have chosen to go to extreme lengths to avoid getting an icky loss tacked to their precious match history, using their config files to help them do so.

"People are intentionally abusing the cheating detection system to cancel games with no consequence when they are losing," streamer LytePk says in a social media post. "Fix this ASAP, this has happened to me five times on stream today."

The trick seems to involve players leaving a match temporarily, dropping config files into the game file mid match, and then loading back into the game. This causes the match to cancel. Why, you ask? Well NetEase doesn't like players messing with the config files.

At first players began tinkering with their config files to try and fix the game's poor optimisation, messing around with it so they could get better framerates or just so it would run better on their PC. Now this isn't malicious in and of itself so NetEase by and large left it alone. But it didn't stay that way.

Details

Some players realised that by messing with the settings they could strip Marvel Rivals maps of all their complicated flourishes, visually downgrading it to just its barebones. This gave a competitive advantage as enemy heroes stood out more and there was less visual 'mess' clogging up team fights.

NetEase responded to this trend with a warning: anyone caught with modded configs which would boost performance or optimisation would be met with penalties like temporary suspension. But because some players were still using it for less nefarious reasons penalties have more or less remained benign, like just auto cancelling a game with no de-rank punishment.

Here's a clip of the config files hack in action:

Unfortunately for those who just want Marvel Rivals to run a little better, the next logical step seems to be NetEase dishing out substantial punishments for those caught using modded config files, because this loss work-around is way too easy to get away with. There may also be a more nuanced solution that NetEase could enact, but I wouldn't put money on it.