[UPDATE] Microsoft Devastates Autistic Child By Labeling Him a Cheater

[masticina]

My feelings about this case
Boy or not
Autistic or not

If Microsoft did their research well then he his mother has nothing to stand upon. I mean it! It should by know be known that Microsoft logs EVERYTHING! Even if he did get an achievement through a hacked MW2 game.. that is enough to label him a cheater.

Microsoft has to see him as a customer, but also has to deal with fairness on their network for other customers. It might sound trivial but everybody has to be treated equally!

He is in the end just a number in a database just like anybody else. No Place for special pleading like "But he got autism". So what? The rules and methods remain the same...

 

[Desworks]

If you speak in a public forum, sometimes people respond to you. They have no obligation to agree with you (which is what I assume you meant by "respect") or be gentle to you if they disagree.

The internet would be a much more intelligent place if everyone simply accepted this. Forums are places for discussion and debate after all, and if everyone simply accepts everyone else's viewpoint then they aren't very interesting at all.

As for this topic, Microsoft have simply treated this person exactly as they would any other person, they found evidence of cheating and applied the XBL punishment that all people found cheating get. Any disabilities that the kid has don't factor into this at all, the punishment is applied to the crime, not the criminal. That's pretty much it, and I'm behind Microsoft on this decision.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Well there ya go. Microsoft did its job and has evidence to prove its point, crisis averted. (aside from people who will explode at the idea of autistic kids having anything done to them).

 

[ladysephiroth]

What i'd like to know is how exactly does one get labeled a cheat? What do you have to do? I'm one that gives no rat's ass about my score or achievements but it made me wonder how do you cheat on x-box? I just, play the game and get the scores and achievements, are there codes and such floating around? The only "cheating" i do is look up stuff on www.gamefaqs.com when i need help for a game. Weird though, on the computer i'd understand but the X-box leaves me a bit baffled.

Never thought about that. If using GameFAQ's or a strat guide is cheating, then wow, am I an awful person. *Looks at shelf full of strat guides..*

 

[Anton P. Nym]

That's not correct. Or, at the very least, it's hypocritical unless you think that falsifying one's standing on a game's global leaderboards also hurts no one.

But it's not a highscore system, it's a percent completion system multiplied by ten.

That's false. Most games* can be completed in entirety and not receive a 1000/1000 or 200/200 score from them. Many Achievements are built to reward replay; others for map exploration; my favourites tend to be the ones that support "tricking", as so well done in Crackdown... Base Jumping is my all-time favourite Achievement ever, and is entirely unnecessary to completing the game. Many of the best Achievements measure intelligent or creative play... getting the "Pacifist" Achievement in Geometry Wars is extremely hard to do, for example.

Your example of two players completing the game on different difficulties and receieving the same Gamerscore is also incorrect, at least in the games I've played, as there are often Achievements for playing through at the highest difficulty level. (I still don't have the one for playing Mass Effect 2 on "Insanity" difficulty, though I have all the rest.)

If you value High Score systems, and would resent someone going into the back of an arcade cabinet and setting the DIPs to put their own initials at the top or digitally falsifying a winning lap time of "0:01" in Mario Kart's global leaderboard, then you cannot dismiss cheating on Gamerscore as irrelevant.

-- Steve

edited to add:

What you fail to realize is that Achievements are not a single player experience. Achievements are essentially a world wide metagame. Now, you can chose not to play or only care about the gamerscore of your personal friends but not everyone plays like that and it's not fair to them when a bunch of cheaters throw off the curve.

Another good point. If Gamerscore was just a local phenomenon, and not a global one, then indeed cheating on it would have no effect just like cheating in Solitare. It's because it's a publicly-displayed feature, one that can be compared with the scores of others, that Gamerscore cheating should be considered the same as cheating in multiplayer matches.

I'll also add that having the ability to manipulate Gamerscore may indicate having the ability to manipulate other multiplayer functions, a practice Xbox Live certainly has an interest in discouraging.

 

[hyperdrachen]

"lol, gamerscore"

While it's a bit sad that an autistic child is made to feel so devastated, I have to say that it's ridiculous how much people care about achievements and a glorified score counter.

Amen, Amen. I don't know what's worse, that microsoft has a task force out there policing bogus gamerscore(omg don't care), or that this kids mother has condones his obsession over his gamerscore. But we live in a time where you can get a TV show for being a moron and having a kid when you're 17 so...

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

But it's not a highscore system, it's a percent completion system multiplied by ten. Let's put it in these terms; say I play games for the challenge, but you play them for the story. I put a single player game on the hardest difficulty, and struggle through it all the way to the end. You, on the other hand, cheat to make it easier to get through the story. Does it really hurt me in any way that, at the end of the day, your completion bar reads the same as mine? So why should it matter that some kid may or may not have cheated on his gamer score?

I'd really like my gameshark back, Microsoft. Fit it with some sort of lockout chip that recognizes multiplayer modes if you have to, but bring back singleplayer cheats. They were so much fun to screw around with back in the day.

I see where you are coming from, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot with your point about the GameShark where you acknowledge that cheating should be restricted to single player experiences.

What you fail to realize is that Achievements are not a single player experience. Achievements are essentially a world wide metagame. Now, you can chose not to play or only care about the gamerscore of your personal friends but not everyone plays like that and it's not fair to them when a bunch of cheaters throw off the curve.

-snip-

Just because you don't value something doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

I personally couldn't give a fuck about the Oscars, but who the fuck am I to say some up-and coming-actor shouldn't care about it?

Anyway, as for the story.

If he cheated, he should be punished just like everyone else regardless of his autism.

I see where your coming from, but you're talking about a very indirect form of competition; I'm talking about unbalancing a direct form of competition. I remember playing Delta Force 2, and running into people who had hacked the game so they could autofire an infinite number of hand grenades while flying around and turning invisible -- in a "realistic" shooter. I also remember playing Mario Kart Wii online, and running into people with infinite bullet bill. That ruined the experience for everyone on the server/in the lobby, whereas the gamer score thing really ruins nothing; but then I'm of the opinion that Steam achievements, which have no score attached to them, are the way to do achievements -- not Microsoft's "let's encourage e-peen waving" idea.

 

[RikuoAmero]

Okay why does Microsoft care about Gamerscores? Unless I missed something, they're actually practically useless. You can't spend them on anything. All they're good for is a d*ck waving competition "I played 20 games and got all achievements on them. Beat that!"
If you could trade in Gamerscores for stuff on Xbox Live, then yeah I could understand this anti-cheater mentality Microsoft has, but...someone fill me in?

Maybe the disabled kid relies on the xbox as an escapism and having a high gaming score makes him feel proud. Losing his gamerscore made it hard for him to play his escapism with such a label and low score he may be feeling like he will never make it back to what he use be on his gamer card.

Not to be rude or anything but you didn't answer my question. I wasn't asking why the kid cared, I was asking why MICROSOFT cared. If I hack my Xbox Live account so I can get free Microsoft points, which I then use to pay for content, then yes, I can understand MS getting pissed. But Gamerscore doesn't do anything, its solely an e-penis measuring device for the user, therefore, Microsot shouldn't care at all if I hack it or not.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

That's not correct. Or, at the very least, it's hypocritical unless you think that falsifying one's standing on a game's global leaderboards also hurts no one.

But it's not a highscore system, it's a percent completion system multiplied by ten.

That's false. Most games* can be completed in entirety and not receive a 1000/1000 or 200/200 score from them. Many Achievements are built to reward replay; others for map exploration; my favourites tend to be the ones that support "tricking", as so well done in Crackdown... Base Jumping is my all-time favourite Achievement ever, and is entirely unnecessary to completing the game. Many of the best Achievements measure intelligent or creative play... getting the "Pacifist" Achievement in Geometry Wars is extremely hard to do, for example.

Your example of two players completing the game on different difficulties and receieving the same Gamerscore is also incorrect, at least in the games I've played, as there are often Achievements for playing through at the highest difficulty level. (I still don't have the one for playing Mass Effect 2 on "Insanity" difficulty, though I have all the rest.)

If you value High Score systems, and would resent someone going into the back of an arcade cabinet and setting the DIPs to put their own initials at the top or digitally falsifying a winning lap time of "0:01" in Mario Kart's global leaderboard, then you cannot dismiss cheating on Gamerscore as irrelevant.

-- Steve

Have you ever played a game with a completion counter built in? You can beat the game on those, too, but to 100% it you have to do every side quest, collect every trinket, go everywhere and do everything -- which makes my comparison quite valid. All Microsoft did when they came up with Achievements was standardize a form of completion counter across all games.

As for your second point, it wasn't an example of people achieving the same gamer score on different difficulty settings; it was an example of two people playing one of those old style "percent complete" games, one on the highest difficulty setting, and one cheating, but both achieving the same score. My point was the fact that one didn't affect the other.

As for your third point, I can see how that would annoy people, but seriously, it's a pointless competition, and it's one that shouldn't exist in a modern environment. There's a huge difference between the high scores on one arcade cabinet, and a global completion table across every game on a home console. For one thing, you can't really expect people to use a gameshark -- or find any way to cheat, for that matter -- on an arcade cabinet.

 

[littlewisp]

Err. . .how severe is his autism, exactly? Is it closer to aspergers ? It seems possible someone might have bumped up the level of his disability to earn sympathy from the masses.

 

[SketchyFK]

Erm... i know people who also do nothing but play the Xbox yet they still have friends. This is a kid with autusm, if u don't have it then i can tell you right now, making friends is really, REALLY hard for us. Most autistic kids get severly bullied at school and find refuge in computer games. Now that his computer games are also "bullying" him in the way of calling him a cheater, this would be a MAJOR thing to him.

Here is my problem with that, just because you have a disability it doesnt make you special and immune to the rules. If you cheat then you cheated and should suffer the same punishment as every single other person who gets caught cheating.

Oh don't get me wrong, I never said that he SHOULDN'T be punished if he cheated. I'm pretty sure that in my earlier posts i said the exact same thing. My old english teacher had a child who was retarted (his words not mine for those who might take offense) but he said that when his daughter did something wrong, she would be treated the exact same as his other children. It's only born fair.

On a side note i also mentioned how it might be less likely that the kid cheated depending on what kind of autism they had. If, say, they had asperger's syndrome then its very unlikely that they cheated. A.S sufferers have a tendency to follow rules to the letter.

NOTE: depending on what kind of autism they had.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I wasn't asking why the kid cared, I was asking why MICROSOFT cared.

The same reason they care about multiplayer cheating; it pisses off the other customers. People attach value to their scores and resent having their scores devalued by someone else's cheating. If enough paying customers get pissed off enough by the cheating to quit, MS loses that subscription revenue.

-- Steve

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I wasn't asking why the kid cared, I was asking why MICROSOFT cared.

The same reason they care about multiplayer cheating; it pisses off the other customers. People attach value to their scores and resent having their scores devalued by someone else's cheating. If enough paying customers get pissed off enough by the cheating to quit, MS loses that subscription revenue.

-- Steve

And then there's the customers who are pissed off by the inability to cheat in a singleplayer game. Did you really never have a Game Shark, a Game Genie, or a Pro Action Replay as a kid? And did you never use the built in cheats on games like Doom and Goldeneye? Because there's a lot of people out there who seriously miss being able to do that kind of thing, and Microsoft's draconian implementation of Gamer Score is almost directly to blame.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Have you ever played a game with a completion counter built in? You can beat the game on those, too, but to 100% it you have to do every side quest, collect every trinket, go everywhere and do everything -- which makes my comparison quite valid. All Microsoft did when they came up with Achievements was standardize a form of completion counter across all games.

Again you miss the point. Achievements may be given for levels of completion percentage, but they're not directly comparable. Particularly the ones granted for multiplayer gameplay refute your comparision.

Above also refers to your second paragraph, omitted for the sake of saving electrons.

As for your third point, I can see how that would annoy people, but seriously, it's a pointless competition, and it's one that shouldn't exist in a modern environment. There's a huge difference between the high scores on one arcade cabinet, and a global completion table across every game on a home console. For one thing, you can't really expect people to use a gameshark -- or find any way to cheat, for that matter -- on an arcade cabinet.

I picked my arcade example with malice aforethought; one employee of an arcade I used to frequent was caught manipulating high score settings on the consoles in the arcade. Caused a bit of a fuss; I think the guy was fired because of it. (I know I never saw him again at the arcade, anyway. Didn't much miss the dweeb, for that matter.)

I'd say if it's worth getting fired over, it's easily worth getting a cheat ban that costs $0.

-- Steve

PS: If you really want to cheat on your console, fine; do it offline, not associated with your Gamertag or on a console you'd connect to Live. MS doesn't care how badly you cheat if it doesn't affect Live.

 

[Jegsimmons]

now im not saying the kid himself cheated (i highly doubt he was) it could have been a misunderstanding, BUT it still is microsofts call on what happens to your account if you were suspected of foul play.

and on an odd note: does any get the feeling that this kid made news because he was autistic? (dont get me wrong, im not makeing fun of autism, far from it, one of my school mates is a high functioning autistic) but what about all the other people who lost their gamer score? are they not news worthy?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Have you ever played a game with a completion counter built in? You can beat the game on those, too, but to 100% it you have to do every side quest, collect every trinket, go everywhere and do everything -- which makes my comparison quite valid. All Microsoft did when they came up with Achievements was standardize a form of completion counter across all games.

Again you miss the point. Achievements may be given for levels of completion percentage, but they're not directly comparable. Particularly the ones granted for multiplayer gameplay refute your comparision.

Above also refers to your second paragraph, omitted for the sake of saving electrons.

As for your third point, I can see how that would annoy people, but seriously, it's a pointless competition, and it's one that shouldn't exist in a modern environment. There's a huge difference between the high scores on one arcade cabinet, and a global completion table across every game on a home console. For one thing, you can't really expect people to use a gameshark -- or find any way to cheat, for that matter -- on an arcade cabinet.

I picked my arcade example with malice aforethought; one employee of an arcade I used to frequent was caught manipulating high score settings on the consoles in the arcade. Caused a bit of a fuss; I think the guy was fired because of it. (I know I never saw him again at the arcade, anyway. Didn't much miss the dweeb, for that matter.)

I'd say if it's worth getting fired over, it's easily worth getting a cheat ban that costs $0.

-- Steve

PS: If you really want to cheat on your console, fine; do it offline, not associated with your Gamertag or on a console you'd connect to Live. MS doesn't care how badly you cheat if it doesn't affect Live.

And you completely miss my point; I take it you weren't gaming in the 90's? Because I'm not simply talking about getting to the end of the story. I'm talking about the completion counters that, last gen and earlier, kept track of pretty much the exact same thing that gamer score does today. And yes, tampering with the scores in an arcade is worth getting fired over. However, tampering with them in a singleplayer console game really has no bearing on anything. Your suggestion to unplug the Xbox from live is patently absurd. What you're saying is to have a singleplayer experience, I have to completely disconnect from the internet -- even when the game is singlelplayer only. It's Ubisoft's DRM in reverse, and equally absurd.

Edit: Looking closer at your PS, I realize that you not only suggest to do it offline, but on a modded console that cannot be taken online, for fear of Microsoft revoking your gaming priveleges. Do you not see how absurd that is, when just last gen you could walk down to Wal-mart, buy a game shark, and not fear any repercussions?

 

[Mardok45]

Autistic children shouldn't be using a gaming system as their primary form of entertainment anyway. They need to be outside with other people.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

I'm going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. Unlike what Hollywood would have you believe, having a mental disorder does not give you intellectual superpowers. I sincerely doubt that this 11 year old used the magical power of autism to boost his gamerscore so high and so quickly that it resembled cheating.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

I wasn't asking why the kid cared, I was asking why MICROSOFT cared.

The same reason they care about multiplayer cheating; it pisses off the other customers. People attach value to their scores and resent having their scores devalued by someone else's cheating. If enough paying customers get pissed off enough by the cheating to quit, MS loses that subscription revenue.

-- Steve

And then there's the customers who are pissed off by the inability to cheat in a singleplayer game. Did you really never have a Game Shark, a Game Genie, or a Pro Action Replay as a kid? And did you never use the built in cheats on games like Doom and Goldeneye? Because there's a lot of people out there who seriously miss being able to do that kind of thing, and Microsoft's draconian implementation of Gamer Score is almost directly to blame.

Uh-huh. Except that there are cheats built into certain single-player games. I've seen plenty of them, and they're placed there by developers. And all of them seemed to see fit to disable achievements in whatever saved game you use the cheats in, so why should unsanctioned tampering yield achievements while dev-approved cheats don't? That's like a bank policy that allows unlimited withdrawals from ATMs as long as you successfully steal the money.

 

[D_987]

And then there's the customers who are pissed off by the inability to cheat in a singleplayer game. Did you really never have a Game Shark, a Game Genie, or a Pro Action Replay as a kid? And did you never use the built in cheats on games like Doom and Goldeneye? Because there's a lot of people out there who seriously miss being able to do that kind of thing, and Microsoft's draconian implementation of Gamer Score is almost directly to blame.

Call of Duty 4, GTA IV included in-game cheats [to use a couple of mainstream examples]. There's no rule stopping developers implementing cheats into their games. Most just don't want to. Furthermore you're talking about a tiny, tiny niche here - and one nobody, including developers, really cares about. You want to cheat in single-player games using illegitimate means? Don't connect to Xbox Live...