Gamerscore Resets

[Treeinthewoods]

So I have a friend that lives out of state and we like to play some Xbox together whenever we can. Yesterday I got a message from him which I can paraphrase,

"Hey, I won't be on Live or playing Xbox any more because Bungie and Microsoft reset my gamerscore to zero and said I'm a cheater. It now says "cheater" on my profile. Screw them all, I never cheated and they won't give it back."

I haven't really talked to him about it but I'm curious. His gamerscore was in the 80k range and seemed to jump from the 20k range incredibly fast after he moved. I'm not sure whether or not he cheated for it but the fact that he's blaming Bungie as well as Microsoft makes me wonder. If all he did was cheat at Reach (which he dusted the achievements for suprisingly fast) would they reset everything or does this indicate some more wide spread cheating? If all he's doing is looking up how to unlock achievements quickly with a walkthrough that's fine (lame but fine) but will it get you the reset?

TL;DR - What would someone have to do to cause their gamerscore to be reset to zero on Xbox live? Is unlocking achievements too fast grounds for suspiscion? What do they have to find/confirm before they take action? Would cheating on one game get you completely reset?

 

[Sephychu]

80K is a lot. Does he have the necessary volume of games to make this possible?
I think fast unlocks is grounds for suspicion, but not reset, but then, I'm not certain.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

This is a new one. I've never heard of this happening before and doesn't seem possible at all.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

To have your entire gamerscore reset you basically have to pretty much use every glitch and hack known to man.

If he hex hacked his Xbox then they would reset him, and they would not have gotten it wrong.

 

[Magners]

He cheated getting 80k takes a very long time

 

[Jasper Jeffs]

You need to gamesave to get it reset, which is pretty much hacking to unlock achievements.

 

[Jamash]

To get your Gamerscore reset, it has to increase by a certain number of points in less time than it was physically possible to earn those points, e.g. if you have 20,000 GS, go offline for a week and then when you next sign into Live you have 80,000 GS, it's pretty obvious you didn't 100% 60 games in that week, especially when they're not even on your recently played game's list.

Another dead give-away is when you earn achievements out of order, e.g. earning the achievement for completing level 10 before you got the achievement for completing level 9, or if you've earned online achievements without being connected to Live.

It is possible to earn offline achievements, so it is possible to see someone's Gamerscore suddenly increase by quite a large amount if they've been offline for a while and earned a lot of achievements in that period, but Microsoft can easily tell when someone's Gamerscore has increased by a disproportionately large amount.

It's hardly rocket science catching Gamerscore cheaters because by it's very nature, Gamerscore is a public accolade attached to your profile and logged by & through Microsoft's servers... you could privately hack your Gamerscore to 1 million offline, but as soon as you connect to Live and attempt to earn kudos for that number, it'll be flagged as suspicious and investigated.

I've read somewhere that 80,000 is the threshold at which you're account will be automatically flagged and scrutinised by Microsoft's Gamerscore analysis software, and by all accounts it's very through and practically infallible (after all, it's just basic maths analysing the increase of a figure over a set time).

 

[HTID Raver]

a mate of mine only had about 3.5k and then his got reset or something and it only shows him with like around 800 gamerscore, i have no clue what happened and he says he dosent either.
he could have hacked his score scince he he seems like the type to do so but it still irks me

 

[BlueberryMUNCH]

Yeah...a big jump is a bit suspect...but i think you should've spoken to him again before posting, I'm curious now D:

 

[Treeinthewoods]

This is a new one. I've never heard of this happening before and doesn't seem possible at all.

I know, I need to call him to really find out what happened but I can confirm his once mighty 80k is now 35 even with some Pac-Man unlocks. His message tone indicates severe pissed off levels.

80K is a lot. Does he have the necessary volume of games to make this possible?
I think fast unlocks is grounds for suspicion, but not reset, but then, I'm not certain.

Yeah, when I compare our scores I can see all the games on his list are "legit" but he plays a lot of games like NBA2K6 and Lost so he can get unlocks really easily. The guy even rented Avatar: The Last Airbender because you can get all 1000 pretty much in one area by pushing the same button over and over again. If you look up "whore" in a dictionary his picture is right underneath Air Force Amy's.

The only thing that made me feel suspicious was when he got 100% on Mass Effect 1 (which I don't have even thought I played it a lot) at a speed faster then light and told me how much he hated the game. I just figured he was using a guide (I saw one online that basically explained exactly how to 100% the game in three play throughs).

Basically, I knew he was a whore I just didn't know he was a cheating whore. ;P

To have your entire gamerscore reset you basically have to pretty much use every glitch and hack known to man.

If he hex hacked his Xbox then they would reset him, and they would not have gotten it wrong.

You need to gamesave to get it reset, which is pretty much hacking to unlock achievements.

What is a hex hack? I didn't even know you could cheat for achievements other then by looking up guides and researching easy cheesy games. So in theory how does one hack gamerscore?

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

What is a hex hack? I didn't even know you could cheat for achievements other then by looking up guides and researching easy cheesy games. So in theory how does one hack gamerscore?

He basically used a program that brute-forced its way into his gamertag, then he could change things such as gamerscore values on or off, his display picture and his avatar.

It breaks the terms of service so Microsoft are allowed to brick his console.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I've never heard of such a thing, but, to be honest, I never really care about my gamerscore. I like that it exists and that it is significant but I rarely (if ever) check to see what score someone else has gotten. That said, there are plenty of people who believe that little number holds significant value and in some cases, I could see a portion of that audience resorting to cheating, or at the very least playing games with each to get achievements.

Personally, since that number has absolutely no impact upon anything tangible and it's only value is relative, I don't care if Microsoft reset the number as a result of cheating. I would go so far as to applaud such an act as it preserves what little value is there anyway.

To put it another way, when I see someone attain some absolutely absurd score in a game that is best explained through cheating (the people who top the list in Battlefield Bad Company 2, for example, would have had to rack up at least four kills per minute for around 40 consecutive days. While that doesn't sound entirely unimaginable, the top handful is so far beyond the remainder of the list that I'm inclined to believe it was cheating and not skill and pathological dedication that achieved it. There are plenty of other examples you can come up with at your leisure), that score has no value or meaning. Just having a larger integer associated with your name means little when that integer becomes an arbitrary number.

 

[twistedheat15]

Always seems amusing that ppl cheat just to get scores/trophys that do absolutely nothing, with 90% of ppl not caring since they assume you cheated anyway.