Marvel Rivals Restricted From Competitive Matches: The Rules Behind Each Restriction

Requirements that look like a restriction

Some blocks are not penalties at all. The wiki's Competitive page says players can enter Competitive once they reach Level 15. The April 11, 2025 patch notes set that minimum for new players, with an exception: if you had already completed at least one valid Competitive match before then, you could still join below Level 15. If your account is under the level, the only fix is playing other modes until you reach it.

Party size is the other common one. The Competitive page lists these team queuing rules. Before you finish your placement matches, a party can have at most three players. From Bronze to Grandmaster you can queue in any party size except a five-stack. From Celestial to One Above All, only solo or duo queue is allowed. When several limits apply, the strictest one wins. For parties that include someone in placements, the wiki adds that the gap between the highest and lowest ranked members must be under three divisions. If your group can't queue together, check these before assuming anyone is penalized.

Hero bans also have a threshold. Bans happen only when every player in the lobby is Gold III or higher, with each team banning three heroes. Since Season 10.5 the teams take turns (Team B bans one, Team A two, Team B two, Team A one), so the same hero can no longer be banned twice.

Disconnect penalties: the 70-second and 90-second rules

The most common true restriction is the Competitive matchmaking ban that follows a disconnect. The rules published with the August 8, 2025 update, recorded on the wiki, work in two stages.

Before the match is valid. If you disconnect during loading, the ban/pick phase, hero select, or within the first 70 seconds of the match, the match is declared invalid. You get a T1 penalty that scales with repeat offences, and your penalty count increases. Everyone else's match simply ends with no result.

After 70 seconds, if you never come back. If the match ends within 90 seconds of your disconnect, it settles normally with no penalty. If it ends 90 to 150 seconds after you dropped, you get a T1 point penalty and a Competitive matchmaking ban, win or lose. If it ends more than 150 seconds after you dropped, you get a T2 point penalty and a Competitive matchmaking ban, win or lose. In both cases, if your team loses, your remaining teammates receive ranked point compensation.

After 70 seconds, if you reconnect. If your team wins, normal settlement and no penalty. If your team loses, the point penalty is based on how long you were gone (same 90 and 150 second thresholds), but there is no Competitive matchmaking ban. That's why relaunching and rejoining immediately is the single most useful habit: it can turn a ban into nothing at all.

How long the ban lasts, by offence

The same August 8, 2025 rules publish the scaling table. Here it is row by row, with the matchmaking ban followed by the T1 and T2 point penalties.

First offence: 15-minute Competitive ban; T1 penalty 25 points, T2 penalty 30 points.

Second offence: 1-hour ban; T1 30, T2 35.

Third offence: 3-hour ban; T1 35, T2 40.

Fourth offence: 8-hour ban; T1 40, T2 45.

Fifth offence or more: 20-hour ban; T1 40, T2 45.

Two things the published rules don't say: how long an offence stays on your record before the count goes back down, and whether the count is shared between seasons. We haven't found a source for either, so this page leaves them open. What the table makes clear is that the cost climbs quickly, from a 15-minute wait to most of a day by the fifth offence.

Quick Match has its own ladder for players who disconnect and leave: a warning the first time, then bans of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, and 8 hours from the fifth offence on.

What your teammates get when someone leaves

If a teammate's disconnect costs you a match, the rules compensate you. When the disconnected player's team loses and the drop lasted more than 90 seconds, remaining players receive ranked points back. The compensation by rank is 12 points in Bronze, Silver and Gold; 8 points in Platinum, Diamond and Grandmaster; and 4 points in Celestial, Eternity and One Above All.

Compensation can't turn a loss into a gain. The rules cap the result at -1: their example is a Gold player who would have lost 10 points, receives 12 points of compensation, and so would end on +2, but the final result is set to -1 instead. Compensation also applies when a team loses with both inactive and disconnected players: the fully engaged teammates are compensated.

There's also a way out of a short-handed first round. If a player disconnects in the first round and doesn't reconnect within 90 seconds, the team may vote to surrender, needing one vote fewer than the number of players remaining (three votes when four remain).

AFK and inactivity penalties

Being detected as inactive (AFK) is penalized more heavily than disconnecting early. Under the August 8, 2025 rules, if a player is detected AFK within the first 70 seconds, the match is invalid and the inactive player receives a T2 penalty, which scales with repeat offences, and the penalty count increases. Other players' match ends immediately with no result or deduction.

After the first 70 seconds, if the AFK player's team wins, there is no penalty. If the team loses, the inactive player gets a T2 penalty and a Competitive matchmaking ban, both scaling with repeat offences, and their teammates receive no compensation. If a player is both inactive and disconnected, the highest applicable penalty applies.

One detail helps honest players: since the February 21, 2025 update, the AFK timer pauses while you wait to respawn, so standing still on a respawn timer doesn't count as being inactive.

Placement matches have stricter rules

Since Season 5 (the November 14, 2025 update), your first 10 ranked matches of a season are placement matches, and disconnects during them are handled more strictly. If you disconnect, time out on reconnect, go inactive or commit a similar violation during a placement match and the match ends within 90 seconds, the result settles normally. If it ends more than 90 seconds after your disconnect, you are given a loss for that placement match, receive a ranked suspension, and get an offence recorded, regardless of the match outcome. If you're judged to have deliberately gone AFK, there's no penalty if your team wins; if it loses, the result counts, you receive a ranked suspension, and an offence is recorded.

The rules also cover the people around you. If someone in your own party disconnects for more than 90 seconds and you lose, the placement match counts as a loss for you, but you get no ranked suspension. If a matched teammate (not in your party) does the same and you lose, the match is ruled invalid and doesn't count towards your placement. During placements, parties are capped at three players.

Chat behaviour: warnings, mutes and matchmaking restrictions

Conduct can also block matchmaking. NetEase's Text and Voice Chat Moderation Guidelines, published October 10, 2026, say the game uses automated detection, player reports and manual review, and that penalties escalate with the severity and frequency of the behaviour. The penalty types it lists are a warning; a mute, with chat and voice bans lasting up to 365 days depending on severity; a matchmaking restriction, under which players with multiple violations are temporarily blocked from matches; and a long-term account ban that prevents logging in, for particularly severe or repeated offences.

Prohibited speech includes insults, threats and harassment, abuse over in-game performance, discrimination and hate speech, doxing, threats of violence, sexual content, and spam or promotion of boosting and real-money trading. An October 16, 2026 announcement said NetEase had further escalated speech penalties and would apply significantly harsher penalties for severe or repeated violations. Unlike the disconnect rules, the guidelines publish no durations for matchmaking restrictions, so we can't tell you how long one lasts. Reports can be made with the in-game tool during or immediately after a match.

Prohibited software, mods and how to appeal

The most serious restrictions come from cheating tools. NetEase's Prohibited Software & Hardware List bans, while the game is running, hardware such as DMA devices, Kmbox, monitor splitters, fusers, synchronizers and hardware macros; keyboard-and-mouse adapters such as the XIM, Cronus Zen, Titan Two, KeyMander and Brook Sniper series; hacking and debugging software such as Cheat Engine, Process Hacker, x64dbg and WinDbg; emulation scripts such as AutoHotkey; third-party plugins such as Blitz; virtual machines such as VMware, KVM and VirtualBox; editing graphics-related .ini files; and loading mods that break balance. It says use may lead to removal from the game or stricter penalties proportionate to the violation.

Mods got their own announcement on October 15, 2026. NetEase said some mods use memory injection that triggers its Anti-Cheat system, lifted the suspensions it had issued over the previous two days, told players to delete violating mods and specifically the files pystubber.asi and MarvelRivalsUnmountBlocker.asi, and said continued use will be penalized.

Appeals. For a ban you believe is wrong, both that announcement and the August 2025 penalty rules point to official customer support. The launch-period FAQ directs players to the Marvel Rivals Discord, where a Support Bot takes requests, and the site footer lists marvel_rivals@global.netease.com. Give your platform, account details, the time it happened and what you saw. If disconnects caused your restriction, the fixes are at marvel rivals lag spikes fix and marvel rivals error code 10; rank rules are at marvel rivals ranks.