Marvel Rivals' Player Bounties Just Weaken Your Team Comp BTW

Much like its main competition, Overwatch, I’d argue that the worst part about Marvel Rivals is its community. While you can certainly run into friendly and funny teammates from time to time, toxicity is rampant in NetEase’s hero shooter. Personally, I’ve seen people throw a match purely because one of my teammates picked Jeff the Land Shark, I’ve seen players try to surrender after a single bad fight, and I’ve lost more than a few competitive matches due to leavers. Problematic gamers regularly make Marvel Rivals less enjoyable than it should be, so I can see why the idea of vengeful gamers going out of their way to punish them is so appealing. However, the reality is that doing so only makes things worse.

Marvel Rivals bounty hunting website intlist has recently gone viral for letting players earn real money by ruining the games of targeted players. If a frustrated player posts a bounty on a griefer or thrower, the unsavory player’s name will be added to the intlist website, and bounty hunters will be tasked with griefing them back or throwing a match if they get them on their team. In the days since this story broke, I’ve seen Marvel Rivals players celebrating the idea of bounty hunting, likely just reading the headlines about griefers being griefed and taking that as a positive. However, intlist is anything but good for games like Marvel Rivals, as it doesn’t take long to recognize the huge flaws with the system.

intlist doesn’t just offer bounties for Marvel Rivals, but a range of competitive games, including Counter-Strike 2, Deadlock, League of Legends, Overwatch, and Valorant.

Marvel Rivals’ Bounty Hunting Only Punishes Regular Players

Image via Netease

When you think of the kind of player that’s willing to throw a match of Marvel Rivals, it should immediately become clear that trolling them back is unlikely to have much of an impact. These unsavory players tend to game for hours on end, with a loss for them not being as meaningful as it is for those who only play from time to time. They’re also likely to have alt accounts, making any attempt to troll them back seem even more pointless, as they can just switch over to one of those if their SR drops too low. If they’re willing to quit a match the second they see something they dislike in a team comp, it’s hard to imagine them caring when a teammate throws to “punish them.” They’ll just shrug it off and continue being their rude selves in a different match.

Who’s That Character?

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Who’s That Character?

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Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)

If the griefers ultimately don’t care about being griefed back, then the only players who actually suffer are the four random teammates that are stuck with the original troll and intlist’s paid troll looking to fulfill a bounty. What’s even more frustrating is that intlist is seemingly well aware of this issue. Per IGN, the social media account for intlist has already stated that “collateral damage is an unfortunate cost of war.” Ultimately, though, this logic falls flat due to the sheer amount of collateral damage. Only the person taking on the bounty profits, getting 80% of the listed payout, and even they’re taking a loss. Everyone else on the team — not just the griefer, but the four Marvel Rivals players who had no choice in who they were stuck with — suffers.

Intlist’s Bounty Hunting Creates a Slippery Slope, and Only Intlist Gets to Traverse It

intlist’s bounty hunts aren’t just problematic because they create more throwers, but because there clearly aren’t enough steps in place to prevent good players from being wrongly targeted by bounty hunters. Well-known Marvel Rivals Twitch streamer Jay3, who never throws his matches, was listed on the website as a bounty, likely by a troll looking to mess with the streamer. This is an obvious red flag since there’s so much evidence against Jay3 being problematic, and it opens the door to any player getting a bounty placed on them by the actual toxic players. Then, there’s the fact that players carrying out these bounties are becoming griefers themselves, and are liable to be added to the bounty list by one of the four teammates that had their match ruined because of the drama. This creates an endless loop where only intlist profits, taking its 20% cut from each bounty as more and more get added and matches get progressively worse.

Intlist’s Temporary Removal is a Chance For a Moment of Clarity

This bounty hunting website has briefly stopped profiting off the Marvel Rivals community’s infighting because of security issues that forced it to be taken down, with it supposedly being in the midst of a rebuilding process so that e-mail addresses cannot be leaked online. Before intlist comes back, or another bounty hunting website replaces it, I figured I’d do my part to warn anyone supporting these bounty hunts of the problems they can cause. I may just be a run-of-the-mill Diamond Vanguard, but I’ve seen my fair share of throwers before this nonsense started, so I’m dreading the idea of that number increasing because of some useless bounty hunts.

…the classic phrase ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ holds true in regard to video game bounty hunting.

Griefing a griefer isn’t likely to make them less toxic; you’re simply becoming part of the problem for a few extra dollars. Bounty hunting sites like intlist are hoping for the exact reactions players have had to the headlines about the concept, as it’s easy to see griefers being punished as a win if players don’t actually look into what that punishment entails. If they do put some thought in, though, they’ll realize why users on social media sites like Reddit are desperate for NetEase to intervene and shut intlist down. There’s a reason the report system exists, after all. It’s not instant, and it’s not perfect, and it relies on NetEase to take action against problematic users, but it’s infinitely better than adding to the problem.

Even in a perfect world where skilled players were just picking on griefers in spawn instead of actively quitting or throwing games, there’s a case to be made that intlist would still be problematic. While better, those kinds of bounties would just be turning Marvel Rivals matches into 5v5s, preventing the game from being played the way it was meant to be played. At the end of the day, the classic phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right” holds true in regard to video game bounty hunting. As someone who adores the game and wants Marvel Rivals to thrive for years to come, I’m begging you — don’t become part of the problem by supporting or taking part in Marvel Rivals‘ absurd bounty hunts.