6:55 AM on 03.25.2008
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It has come to light that a number of Xbox Live accounts have faced punishment for boosting their gamerscores through nefarious means. In a most cruel form of justice, those caught unlocking achievements without actually playing games properly have had their scores reset to zero. Major Nelson explains what his team has been up to in dealing with the "most serious offenders" who have been flagged: The steps today takes the form of the following:
• Resetting the entire Gamerscore for an account to zero • The account will be unable to regain all previously obtained achievements and Gamerscore, however, the players will have the ability to gain future Achievements by earning them fairly, like the majority of the Xbox LIVE community does. • The account will be clearly labeled as a cheater for the community to view on xbox.com. You can see an example here. In dash, the personal view of the gamercard will be labeled as well.
Pretty brutal stuff, both fitting and humiliating. While I'd love to revel in the misery of so-called "score whores," I always worry when Microsoft does this stuff -- primarily because I'll never forget them banning my store-bought Xbox 360 from Live without ever telling me why, and I still to this day cannot work out what it was I did wrong. Nevertheless, for as long as my account remains untampered with, I'd like to offer a big "HAHA" at those who just got owned. Serves them right.
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Hey The Cheat, have a trophy!
A hearty pat on the back for figurehead Major Nelson.
Unfortunately, we can't do the same for bigots...
Whoa. They weren't fucking around. Look who's not #1 anymore.
http://live.xbox.com/en-US/profile/profile.aspx?pp=0&GamerTag=StripClubDJ
The fact that ANY cheating takes away EVERYTHING, including fairly earned achievements has to suuuuuuuuuck.
Haha, that's the first time I've seen a legitimately Draconian Internet punishment. You can't get your old achievements back and you're labelled a cheater in multiple places... wow.
I understand that these guys "cheated," but who did they really cheat to deserve this? Is anyone harmed by people who boost their gamerscores? Does anyone even care?
I'm sure that boosting your gamerscore is still a good amount of work and these people still have to be either buying or renting games to get all of these achievements--so who cares?
Its a punishment for actually caring about achievments and gamerscores enough to cheat.
Don't give a rats ass, honestly. Let people raise a score that means absolutely nothing except to the people who are way too competitive and are probably using the same methods to get a higher score.
damn that sucks for them
THE CHEAT! I haven't watched Homestar Runner in forever.
I have nothing to say about this story, but WHO ALWAYS GIVING STRONG BAD A HAND? THE CHEAT! THE CHEAT.
oh well I guess now they go cry foul andso I canjust laugh at them
this is retarded.
There fucking meaningless points! Why do they feel the need to punish those who want a long epeen. I enjoy the concept and execution of achievement points for my own amusement...and a secret competition to pass Butmac that he doesn't know about.
Other than that, who gives a shit if someone cheats? Is Microsoft planning to do something with the millions of points people receive? Or are they just being dicks?
maybe by starting to do this they are going to have more frequent gamerscore competitions, and they are just preventing the cheating ahead of time??
Awesome!
And you got lucky this time Jimmly
I'm pretty sure the gamerscores were going to be a lot more meaningful back in the day, which prizes and whatnot. Then the cheaters essentially fucked it up for everybody. Part of the reason why gamerscores are so useless is because of douchebags like this. For that reason alone, they deserve it.
They also deserve it just for being sad wankers.
I KNOW ABOUT THE COMPETITION I'M AWARE YOU CAN'T FOOL ME!
/runs
Good stuff Major!
HAHA!!
I know I secretly rate each of you (and your friendship to me) based on your Gamerscore, so don't act nonchalant about it.
Cheating is cheating is cheating, there's no excuse.
MS is operating a private business. A feature of their business is being exploited and regardless of what any of you might think about the value of that feature, the cheating renders it even more meaningless.
And what's more lame, the people who actually pay attention in some fashion to the points or the people who go out of their way to cheat in order to get them? Easy answer.
Cheaters are not just sad, sad people but they also seem to want to act like they're better than they really are. Its like the one guy who talks about sleeping with all sorts of women and constantly bragging about his sexual moves when in reality all he has ever done is play solo and read books to sound like he knows what he's talking about.
I get what you're saying Canucker and I agree on some level (same with Jim, but you didn't hear me say anything in regards to ever agreeing with him *shudders at the thought*).
But, for most people, myself included, the value of this feature is rendered meaningless due to the lack of time involved to obtain certain achievements as well as the concept that people should play more of a bad game just for those achievements.
I personally am glad that achievements ended up nothing more than an ePeen score because it's just giving a big middle finger to the mass majority of people who own these gaming systems and don't want their gaming system to be turned into a professional sports right in front of them. Same crap happens with MMOs, and it's annoying as hell.
Just MHO, of course.
how can MS determine if someone cheated though??
I don't even understand how one can cheat to improve gamerscore.
The only ways I can think of is sharing one XBL account in a household or sharing it across multiple 360s. There might be some other ways of cheating as an individual, but I haven't heard of them and I doubt they will broadcast it so as to prevent people from using them.
I don't even understand WHY someone would cheat to improve gamerscore. Isn't that the point of actually playing the game?
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha any dumbass who is so lame as to cheat in a videogame deserves it. ROFLMAO.
I didn't even know people would cheat to boost their gamescore..then again I never understood why people would plod thru a terrible game just to net "easy" points to beef up their gamescore as well.
Bizzare and ridiculous at the same time if you ask me.
@Rorschach
People have been giving up their Gamertag on a memory card and giving it to friends to have them inflate the score. There have also been services that have offered to artificially raise your score for you by playing games on your gamertag for a fee. You can specify the game and achievement with those services.
The problem is for the cheaters and hackers wanting to break into the 360, is that MS tracks EVERYTHING. If they see your gamertag pop up in California, then China, then back to California, and possibly within a 24 hour period followed by say, a 1,000+ point gain in your score, they'll probably tag you.
Actually, you didn`t really need to have the Gamertag on that Memory card, as far as I knew you only needed some Gamesaves. You could download those and load them onto your Xbox, Bada Bing: 1.000 GS! It seemed to be very easy, probably the reason why so many people did it.
Cheater McCheat.....awesome, thy name is Cheater McCheat :P
This deserves some praise.
It's Pete Roses' fault.
good for MS!
I always had suspiscions about that Cheater McCheat, if that's even his real name.
This is good fan service for the true 360 fans. The ones who go out and buy and rent games for the purpose of playing everything to get points.
To do that, (no matter how futile), and then see asswipe-McGee and pals have scores so unatainable it just takes away some of that (futile) joy.
I like achievements, because they are little milestones in a game - and help you play them a little differently, like when I smashed 15 Antlions with cars in Half Life 2 Ep. One, never would have done that without the Achievement and Gamerscore system.
ROFL @ freeman1
From what I had read somewhere, another way they track this is by how fast certain gamer scores were unlocked. I believe that most achievements give the time/date they were unlocked on. I think that some of these people were unlocking 1000/1000 points within a few seconds, on multiple games.
Who is that monster in the picture in the article????
http://lightrave.ytmnd.com/
sweet justice!
Well-played, Xbox Live. Well-played. It's good to see a firm punishment, instead of just simply banning an account. These people can never be punished harsh enough for my liking.
Holy crap.
Poor DJ.
@cheeburga
POOR DJ MY ASS!!!
I'll have to ask some people I know that cheated with the seriously Gears achievement if they were affected. I hope they did >.>
This is brilliant! what an action!
I would've thought they would take away all their 'cheated' achievements but apparently its ALL of them :-) so fucking great! the just punishment!!!
THE CHEAAAAT!
I haven't been on Homestarrunner.com in like... a week
@Understar
It's the Cheat. He's from the website [url]www.homestarrunner.com[/url]
If you go there I highly recommend watching some Strong Bad E-mails.
Good. They definitely deserve it, just for being score-humping douches.
thats so awesome, is there anyway to inform them of people you think are cheating..
not that i would
*testing testing, am i coming in clear* but if someone where..
How do they know if you've been playing the game properly or not?
That's a very important question that needs an answer.
Hooray for The Cheat! A parade for The Cheat!
But nice to see Microsoft taking care of the cheaters. For now.
LMAO
Just desserts.
Man, Fhqwhgads
You're just making yourself look worse, y'know
I mean, everybody's just gonna feel sorry for ya
I mean, I do.
hahah YEA SHIT JUST GOT REAL!
Hi-lar-ious.
Their lives are already miserable if they care this much about achievements. Why make it worse?
Oh, because it's funny. That's why. Hahaha fucking geeks.
And this wouldn't be a problem if they never had to add a retarded "score" to the achievement system in the first place. Just idiotic...
Here The Cheat, have another trophy!
From StripClubDJ's blog:
Largest gamerscore gain: 10/12/2007 (38,455)
Although I have no doubt that MS do track a shitload of stats relating to Live activity, not very hard to seek out blatant cheaters if their scores are like this.
I'd be interested to know if cheaters who stopped cheating as a result of Nelson's earlier warnings on the issue have been punished (or only people who have cheated after a certain date). If so then the system is still tainted.
And does renting Avatar count as cheating? Because you can get 1,000 in around 38 seconds 'legitimately', I believe.
checks his gamertag... phew, still got my sweet sweet 2,779 points. :P
I'm sure they won't punish me for having one "cheated" achievement :D
I did the code on GH3 for all the songs so I could battle with a friend (I don't own the game.) After we finished a song on battle mode I got the achievement "Enlightened Guitarist" :D
This is silly. I don't understand the concept of cheating on the gamerscore at all.
You cheat by loading other peoples game saves, for one. StripClub DJ got over 38,000 points in ONE DAY. That's a pretty obvious way to spot someone cheating.