Marvel Rivals Bounty Site Backfires Spectacularly

Someone looked at Marvel Rivals' griefing problem and thought the solution was a paid marketplace for more griefing. That someone is EchoRivals, a Marvel Rivals content creator who launched Intlist.org on February 23, a site that lets players post cash bounties on throwers and griefers. Other players then queue into that person's lobby, deliberately throw the match, and collect 80% of the bounty pool via PayPal. The remaining 20% presumably funds the continued existence of this idea.

The pitch is blunt: NetEase won't ban throwers, won't fix matchmaking, so the community will handle it. Intlist says as much directly, framing itself as a gap-filler where the developers failed. NetEase has repeatedly denied using Engagement Optimized Matchmaking, but the perception that the studio handles griefing reports with all the urgency of a slow-rolled Dota 2 support is widespread enough that Intlist found a real audience fast.

The problem is obvious the moment you think about it for ten seconds. Throwing a game to punish a thrower doesn't punish the thrower. It punishes the four other random players in the lobby who just wanted a clean ranked game. r/rivals noticed this immediately. One post that gained traction put it plainly: now every game is people throwing each other's games. When Intlist was pushed on the collateral damage issue, the account replied that collateral damage is an unfortunate reality of war. For a site trying to protect competitive integrity, describing innocent ranked players as acceptable casualties is a strange brand position.

The Targeting Problem

The verification process, or lack of one, is where things get genuinely alarming. Several of the bounties posted on the site aren't targeting anonymous griefers at all. Pro player Jay3, founder of the Jay3 Community Clash tournament, ended up with a $7 bounty on his account. A scroll through the listed targets skews heavily toward high-ranked and high-profile players, which suggests the platform is being used as a harassment tool against people some users just don't like. Viper4K flagged this on February 25, and the concern spread quickly. The site also surfaces Twitch usernames and other identifying information alongside in-game names, which goes well beyond what you'd need to report someone through an actual reporting system.

Then, before the debate could really mature, Intlist went offline. EchoRivals announced on the site's Discord that they detected unauthorized access to their database. A limited number of email addresses tied to bounty posts were exposed. No passwords or payment info, according to the team, but that's a rough week-one headline for a site whose entire pitch rests on being a trustworthy community enforcement layer. The site currently shows a "something big is coming" message, which is doing a lot of work.

Marvel Rivals players have been asking NetEase to address the site directly since day one, and honestly, that's the right call. The underlying frustration is legitimate. NetEase's track record on punishing griefers has been weak enough to spawn this whole situation. But Intlist's answer to bad actors ruining your ranked games is to introduce a financial incentive for more bad actors to ruin more ranked games. The Marvel Rivals PlayStation store page still shows a healthy player base worth protecting. NetEase should make it harder for sites like this to find a willing audience in the first place.

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