EA Drops Banhammer On Battlefield 3 Cheaters

[Earnest Cavalli]

EA Drops Banhammer On Battlefield 3 Cheaters


Crime doesn't pay, kids. Especially when said crime is in a virtual warzone.

Shortly after the October 25 debut of Battlefield 3, players began to discover ways to exploit the game's rules. For proof, look no further than the video embedded at right. EA, sensing a possible imbalance in the playerbase, has swung into action, dropping bans on hundreds of players.

From the game's official Twitter feed [https://twitter.com/#!/Battlefield/status/135079725499559938]:

This week we've banned hundreds of offending accounts and have stats-wiped accounts for exploiting

The company, in keeping with common sense, failed to outline which exploits it sees as ban-worthy. I suppose one could argue that this makes playing the game a virtual minefield where one misstep might invite the wrath of a publisher's banhammer, but realistically in these sorts of situations, the only people who end up banned are those who are obviously and willfully gaming the system for ludicrous gains.

As loathe as I am to side with any corporate entity over meatsack humans, I'm glad to see EA being so proactive in its efforts to police the huge Battlefield 3 community. Online multiplayer is the game's greatest strength, and I'd hate to see that ruined by a few hundred teenagers with too much time on their hands and a mad-on for anything they can't destroy.

Source: IGN [http://ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1212428p1.html?RSSwhen2011-11-14_114300&RSSid=1212428&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ignfeeds%2Fall+%28IGN+Complete%29]

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[Vigilantis]

EAs been listening to some Hammerfall I see.Dat ban hammer...they are in full control of your destiny

 

[Dogstile]

As I said before, fix and stat wipe, not ban and ensure loss of access to games.

I'm assuming that's how Origin works anyway. I was far to frightened by EA being heavy handed to actually install it to play BF3.

Edit:

I'll give him credit, his response video to all the hate actually had a few good lines in it.

"Awh, i can't repair that... BUT I CAN REPAIR YOU!".

 

[Dango]

After reading the first uploader comment:

too bad EA hasn't banned me and battlefag bitches are still crying hahahahahaha, fucking owned

I no longer care.

 

[Baresark]

I love it. Ban people because you can't fix the game. This is why you can't trust EA. They only exploited bad programming and you stole their money.

 

[A. Smith]

Frankly, this doesn't really matter. Using that exploit, all you get are the rank unlocks (mostly worthless beyond level 20) and engineer unlocks (useless beyond the SCAR-H). You don't get other class' unlocks, and you don't get the all-important attachments on your guns.

All you get is a shiny rank.

Who gives a damn.

 

[XaVierDK]

"So, you end up with a shit-ton of points, and the game's broken"...
No, you're broken if you are sincerly having fun doing this... This game is perfectly fine for people who have an ounce of common sense, and actually play the game to PLAY THE GAME...

I don't care for exploiters, they can suck a big fat one along with cheaters...

Best Regards

 

[lacktheknack]

As I said before, fix and stat wipe, not ban and ensure loss of access to games.

I'm assuming that's how Origin works anyway. I was far to frightened by EA being heavy handed to actually install it to play BF3

They're stat-wiping the exploiters, and banning the actual hackers. Standard procedure.

 

[josemlopes]

Wait, so why did they design the game that way since its obvious that it can be easily exploited?

-The engineer should not earn points from repairing something that was damaged by a teammate.
-They could limit the amount of repair points (that were caused by friendly fire) per match.
-Kick the player after X friendly hits

One exploit fixed

 

[JamesStone]

Wait, so why did they design the game that way since its obvious that it can be easily exploited?

-The engineer should not earn points from repairing something that was damaged by a teammate.
-They could limit the amount of repair points (that were caused by friendly fire) per match.
-Kick the player after X friendly hits

One exploit fixed

The level of "thisness" is over nine thousand. Maybe I misunderstood the article, but EA is actually wiping the stats of some random asshole because he exploited a fault made by the producers?
Ya know, Yathzee made once (after he reviewed Deus Ex: Human and you know the rest) a Extra Punctuation saying how that warm feeling of gamers and producers working together to appreciate the game, with all the glitches, faults and exploits that gave you that feeling of experimentation, is getting more and more lost, and this overreaction by EA´s part only proved his point.

Good work EA, you miserable old fuck.

 

[Lukeydoodly]

I like how IGN posted a video on youtube how to do this too.

 

[Dogstile]

As I said before, fix and stat wipe, not ban and ensure loss of access to games.

I'm assuming that's how Origin works anyway. I was far to frightened by EA being heavy handed to actually install it to play BF3

They're stat-wiping the exploiters, and banning the actual hackers. Standard procedure.

After rereading the article, I still don't see where you got that from, sorry if i'm being dense.

 

[lacktheknack]

As I said before, fix and stat wipe, not ban and ensure loss of access to games.

I'm assuming that's how Origin works anyway. I was far to frightened by EA being heavy handed to actually install it to play BF3

They're stat-wiping the exploiters, and banning the actual hackers. Standard procedure.

After rereading the article, I still don't see where you got that from, sorry if i'm being dense.

This week we've banned hundreds of offending accounts and have stats-wiped accounts for exploiting

It's a bit subtle, but the "and" implies that the "accounts [that] exploit[ed]" are not the same as the "offending accounts". Which matches common sense.

Also, I've heard from a couple people on Youtube that they got stat-wiped, but not banned.

 

[Hybridwolf]

I couldn't help but laugh at the video that guy posted as an apology video. best part is when he kills a person using the tool to write stuff on a wall as it "earns points". End of the day, EA should have seen stuff like this coming and this responce is pretty heavy. Besides, they didn't seem to mind all the idling servers on bad company 2, strange they are being so heavy on this one.

 

[ph0b0s123]

willfully gaming the system for ludicrous gains.

It's called gaming the system for a reason. I say this every time but I wonder what would have happened if the Matrix had being made now, instead of when it was. It just would not work, as whenever Neo and his comrades 'gamed the system' in order to pull off super human feats, they would get banned from the system for cheating.

Why do I feel like something core to being a gamer is being lost. I thought it was part of our strength in thinking out site the box and finding exploits in virtual worlds to take advantage of. It was almost Darwinian. Now it's 'you must conform and play in this way....'

Sure go after people making changes to the games to get an advantage, like hackers. If there are exploits in your virtual world which people are taking advantage of, you have only yourselves to blame and should be patching, not banning...

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114191-Hundreds-of-Battlefield-3-Cheaters-Banned

Someone in the Escapist team needs to be designated the task of checking for duplicate stories, methinks.

 

[Frizzle]

willfully gaming the system for ludicrous gains.

It's called gaming the system for a reason. I say this every time but I wonder what would have happened if the Matrix had being made now, instead of when it was. It just would not work, as whenever Neo and his comrades 'gamed the system' in order to pull off super human feats, they would get banned from the system for cheating.

Why do I feel like something core to being a gamer is being lost. I thought it was part of our strength in thinking out site the box and finding exploits in virtual worlds to take advantage of. It was almost Darwinian. Now it's 'you must conform and play in this way....'

Sure go after people making changes to the games to get an advantage, like hackers. If there are exploits in your virtual world which people are taking advantage of, you have only yourselves to blame and should be patching, not banning...

It's one thing in a single player game to exploit and have all the fun you want. It's another when you are on a multiplayer level and are causing detriment to other people's experience. I understand that exploiters and hackers are different, and they should be dealt with differently. But they do things like this so that everyone has equal parameters to play in. Is it fair that one person can get a bunch of unlockable perks and guns after a couple games, while people playing legit have to wait for a couple days to get it all?

And hackers should always be banned. There's nothing that pisses me off more than one guy hitting a button and my entire team getting killed. Screw those guys, I hope their dishwashers explode spontaneously.

 

[Spartan448]

Exploiting is completely and totally allowed. ESPECIALLY in the case of the video in the OP. If you make a multiplayer game, and you're STUPID enough to inculde an Experience Points system that rewards you for repairing friendly fire, than that's the developer's fault, and innocent players should not recieve the sharp stick for that.

Cheating and hacking, on the other hand, are horrible offenses that should recieve perma-bans more often.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Double post

 

[ph0b0s123]

willfully gaming the system for ludicrous gains.

It's called gaming the system for a reason. I say this every time but I wonder what would have happened if the Matrix had being made now, instead of when it was. It just would not work, as whenever Neo and his comrades 'gamed the system' in order to pull off super human feats, they would get banned from the system for cheating.

Why do I feel like something core to being a gamer is being lost. I thought it was part of our strength in thinking out site the box and finding exploits in virtual worlds to take advantage of. It was almost Darwinian. Now it's 'you must conform and play in this way....'

Sure go after people making changes to the games to get an advantage, like hackers. If there are exploits in your virtual world which people are taking advantage of, you have only yourselves to blame and should be patching, not banning...

It's one thing in a single player game to exploit and have all the fun you want. It's another when you are on a multiplayer level and are causing detriment to other people's experience. I understand that exploiters and hackers are different, and they should be dealt with differently. But they do things like this so that everyone has equal parameters to play in. Is it fair that one person can get a bunch of unlockable perks and guns after a couple games, while people playing legit have to wait for a couple days to get it all?

And hackers should always be banned. There's nothing that pisses me off more than one guy hitting a button and my entire team getting killed. Screw those guys, I hope their dishwashers explode spontaneously.

Don't use exploits as it is unfair to other players. How is it unfair? Everyone is able to use the same exploit. The playing field is still completely level. The only party to suffer harm from this is the maker of the game as their scoring system is a joke. In that case they should be repairing the exploits very quickly, rather than relying on bans to change standard gaming behaviour.