360 Achievement cheaters to have their gamerscores set back to zero...ouch! [Archive]

udisi

03-25-2008, 06:35 PM

I wanted to follow up and let you know where we are on the post I made a few months ago on Gamesave Tampering. Today we took action on some of the accounts we have identified as the most serious offenders who have violated the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use by tampering with their Gamerscore and Achievements.

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.

Xbox LIVE remains committed to keeping the service free of cheating in order to maintain a fair and level playing field for everyone.

To read more about Gamerscore corrections read the FAQ on Xbox.com

Edit: Added link directly to our internal test account Gamercard that shows the cheater section.
Posted: Mar 25 2008, 02:01 AM by Major Nelson | with 181 comment(s) |
Filed under: Xbox 360, Xbox Live

Not that I'm a big fan of Achievements, I am, However a huge fan of punishing cheaters.

DigitalSpace

03-25-2008, 06:45 PM

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/8461/winpwn3dkk8.gif

drewbrim

03-25-2008, 07:29 PM

s1lence

03-25-2008, 07:57 PM

Forgive my ignorance as don't get into online gaming. But A. how do people cheat? B. How will they know if someone is cheating? And C. What do you get from cheating/having a high amount of Achievement points?

There are hacks, exploits and gamesaves for games. B: The timestamps or lack there off, the order of the achievements, online achievements unlocked with out playing online, all the achievements that are online unlocked in one day (See Gears of War). C: Your place on the leaderboards, some have even been interviewed in magazines. EGM had an article on gamerscore last month, two of the three people were gamesavers. So personal fame I would say is the motivation.

Nesmaster

03-25-2008, 08:14 PM

Vectorman0

03-25-2008, 08:21 PM

I just made a long winding post on Major Nelson's page regarding this. Basically I said they're walking on eggshells with this and better tread lightly. The "Automated" way of dealing with this scares me. What's to stop someone from getting reset by this method who boosted their gamerscore in a single day by 4000 with NBA 2K6, College Hoops 2K6, NHL 2K6, and Avatar? This 4000 points can be earned in a few hours, but how is this system to interpret different?

Honest people are going to get deleted, I know it. And they have "no way to appeal the decision".

I'm sure they have thought this over thoroughly, and they only keep it to instances where the achievement tracking data they have shows a person as a cheater with 100% certainty. The only problem I can see is if someone gets achievements unintentionally through a glitch in a game when they are not supposed to. It has happened to me and I know it has happened to others.

ProgrammingAce

03-25-2008, 09:20 PM

Accidental aren't really a problem, you have to show systematic abuse.

They're going after obvious abusers. You got 1.1 billion points in geometry wars? Something's wrong. You have the achievement for 1000 kills in Gears and have only recorded 5 matches? Something is wrong. You have a bunch of online-only ranked achievements but you've never had a gold account? Something is wrong. You have achievements for XBLA titles you've only ever played the demos of? Something is wrong.

The way XBL tracks achievements, it's pretty simple to see who's abusing games and who isn't. Even 1 or 2 "improper" achievements isn't going to get you. 50 might be a problem though...

AZ Legend

03-26-2008, 01:43 AM

I really dont know why people try to get a high gamerscore. I mean its cool to try to beat the game and get all the achievements. But its another to play junk games and turn down all settings to get 1000 points. I just dont get it. Maybe if you got something for it besides "Look im cool, i have 100,000 plus points"

Jon R.

03-26-2008, 03:23 AM

Ok, so 2 questions:

First, why zero the entire gamerscore instead of just zeroing the achievements for the specific games that have been cheated up?

And second, why make it impossible to re-earn those achievements after being caught?

I don't get this. I'm not at all fond of the gamerscore concept, but it seems like they want to go out of their way to create punitive measures to make up for the fact that they can't properly prevent or correct a listing that's largely meaningless in the first place. For serious competitions, fine, but for something where the scoring factors are usually bullshit anyway (you turned on the game, 100 points!)?

G-Boobie

03-26-2008, 03:43 AM

Ok, so 2 questions:

First, why zero the entire gamerscore instead of just zeroing the achievements for the specific games that have been cheated up?

And second, why make it impossible to re-earn those achievements after being caught?

Because, quite frankly, it's awesome to kick cheaters where it hurts. Ten points Microsoft.

To some people, Gamerscore is a big deal. Microsoft is arguably the best platform holder right now in terms of community: they see that some people are abusing the system and taking away the value of the achievements in the context of that community. To the people in Xbox Live who care about their gamerscore and do NOT cheat, this is a great turn of events and a sign that Microsoft actually cares about the community they've created.

I don't personally care about achievements(see my crap gamerscore), but cheaters I DO care about. I've been the victim of bots, exploits, hacks, and I love it when developers, publishers or platform holders find ways to punish the idiots screwing my experience.

smork

03-26-2008, 04:03 AM

Jon R.

03-26-2008, 04:57 AM

Because, quite frankly, it's awesome to kick cheaters where it hurts. Ten points Microsoft.

(...)

I don't personally care about achievements(see my crap gamerscore), but cheaters I DO care about. I've been the victim of bots, exploits, hacks, and I love it when developers, publishers or platform holders find ways to punish the idiots screwing my experience.

And that's what sets off my warning bells. There's a difference between protecting something and getting revenge, and this crosses that line. And when it comes to punishing someone as opposed to prevention or correction, developers and publishers are the last fucking people i'd expect to exhibit steady judgment. Especially when the punishment is clear proof of their inability to reasonably handle the matter.

I'm dangerously close to making a bad analogy, which is the bane of all such discussions, but suffice it to say that zeroing out something that was attained legitimately simply because something unrelated was attained illegitimately is bad juju. And to then say "you can't even regain it legitimately now" is just plain retarded.

ProgrammingAce

03-26-2008, 05:15 AM

Ok, so 2 questions:

First, why zero the entire gamerscore instead of just zeroing the achievements for the specific games that have been cheated up?

And second, why make it impossible to re-earn those achievements after being caught?

To answer the first, not all methods of cheating are easily detected. If you have a history of massive abuse, it's easier to just zero the account. Plus, it acts as a deterrent.

To answer the second, the gamerscore system wasn't designed to roll back. Games weren't tested with having a previously won achievement reset. It would break a lot of games, a lot of the achievements couldn't be re-won anyway. Games are designed to only trigger the achievement bonus once. What they did to reset the account is just subtract out your current score back to zero. All of your achievements are still "won". They just don't show up anymore.

Jon R.

03-26-2008, 06:10 AM

I don't mean just the achievements. I don't find it abnormal that they wouldn't keep track of every player's achievement timeline. And since the main thing seems to be savegame cheating, it'd be hairy to keep track of what they had before someone else's savegame was applied to the account.

What i do find abnormal is why they've decided to zero the entire account instead of just zeroing the points from the particular game in which cheating has been detected. If they can subtract the score down to 0, then why can't they subtract the proper amount based on the ones determined to be cheated?

And "deterrent" punishment is not a good argument. I'm looking for "proportional" punishment. These two concepts seem to be mutually exclusive in the videogame industry.

Also, i'm confused now, since i don't have a 360. Do the games not simply send a flag to LIVE, which then credits the achievement? I'm curious as to what, exactly, prevents a game from ever popping off an achievement again. Surely the "condition achieved" flags are stored somewhere, so what makes it impossible to reset those?

Mayhem

03-26-2008, 06:45 AM

What i do find abnormal is why they've decided to zero the entire account instead of just zeroing the points from the particular game in which cheating has been detected. If they can subtract the score down to 0, then why can't they subtract the proper amount based on the ones determined to be cheated?

It's the virtual equivalent of kicking a man when he's down, and personally I love it ;)

Why not?! People have been cheating to boost their score, why not invoke the ultimate insult and just zero their score regardless of how many legit points they actually got? I totally agree with the decision...

Jon R.

03-26-2008, 07:48 AM

smork

03-26-2008, 08:25 AM

Because it's petty and half-assed. There's also a severe cognitive dissonance that occurs when you do something in the name of fair play, but do it in a way that clearly goes beyond fair play. MS apparently wants to keep things fair, but only kinda-sorta not really.

Really, it's alot like committing a small crime. If I go to the store and shoplift a 6 pack of beer, get caught, then I am looking at a fine, maybe a few days in jail. Great. My work finds out I got a criminal record, I'm likely fired. Disproportionate? Yep. Fair? Sure - my employer gets to decide who works for them, there's no entitlement.

You're not entitled to a gamer score if you cheat. How do you avoid getting your gamer scored wiped? You don't cheat. If it's important to you, don't do it.

To me, it's as fair as you can get. If someone is cheating in one game, they are likely cheating in all the games. Perhaps they just haven't been caught yet. Same as my shoplifting analogy: maybe you haven't stolen from your office, or maybe you haven't been caught.

More to the point - being a cheating ass has repercussions. That's the way life SHOULD be.

HYB

03-26-2008, 09:16 AM

This is awesome. If I was in their shoes I would do the same. I don't like cheaters, and it's fun to strike them where it hurts the most.

On another note, I love gamerscore, seriously. I'm just not obsessive about it. I should really hook my xbox back to net though, my gamertag points are old.

heybtbm

03-26-2008, 09:35 AM

I suspect the main reason Microsoft is zeroing the cheater's gamerscores (instead of removing specific "cheated" achievements) is because they don't have the resources or technology to go through every single achievement and determine if they're legit or not. Sure they could whip up some program that could do this, but it would involve too much time and money.

The notion that MS is doing this as "revenge" or out of spite is silly. The simple lesson here is: There are consequences to your actions. Pretty simple...and something we don't see enough of these days. I love it.

swlovinist

03-26-2008, 09:49 AM

Sometimes, when you play with fire...you get burned. MS is going to do this and for the most part, will be catching people who are cheating. For the ones that "werent cheating" and got thier gamer points to zero...you must have been getting too close to the fire.

I have a crappy game score and play casually...I guess that means that I am safe!

s1lence

03-26-2008, 09:52 AM

Well I have a higher gamerscore and I have not cheated to get it.

Sure I boost "dead" multiplayer achievements in games with friends, but I don't cheat. Boosting for those that don't know is playing legit with friends with the goal to get said achievement. PREY is a common game to do this in as no one plays it online anymore. Perfect Dark Zero is another example these days.

I also don't ruin the multiplayer experience of other games that are popular to get the achievements in, I just play the games.

Jon R.

03-26-2008, 12:14 PM

Really, it's alot like committing a small crime. If I go to the store and shoplift a 6 pack of beer, get caught, then I am looking at a fine, maybe a few days in jail. Great. My work finds out I got a criminal record, I'm likely fired. Disproportionate? Yep. Fair? Sure - my employer gets to decide who works for them, there's no entitlement.

You're not entitled to a gamer score if you cheat. How do you avoid getting your gamer scored wiped? You don't cheat. If it's important to you, don't do it.

To me, it's as fair as you can get. If someone is cheating in one game, they are likely cheating in all the games. Perhaps they just haven't been caught yet. Same as my shoplifting analogy: maybe you haven't stolen from your office, or maybe you haven't been caught.

More to the point - being a cheating ass has repercussions. That's the way life SHOULD be.

Sure, sport. Sure. And you'd give all those people what for if they had the guts to say it to your undoubtedly rugged and cleft-chinned face. Thanks for demonstrating exactly why i was trying to avoid making an analogy, by the way.

So, i've noticed the two camps have formed on the issue:
A) People who don't really care either way, but think it's shady to be punitive instead of corrective and preventative

B) People who love the decision based on what is, as far as anyone else can tell, lame nerd aggression

"Consequences to your actions" indeed. Serious business this is.

Vectorman0

03-26-2008, 12:32 PM

Sure, sport. Sure. And you'd give all those people what for if they had the guts to say it to your undoubtedly rugged and cleft-chinned face. Thanks for demonstrating exactly why i was trying to avoid making an analogy, by the way.

So, i've noticed the two camps have formed on the issue:
A) People who don't really care either way, but think it's shady to be punitive instead of corrective and preventative

B) People who love the decision based on what is, as far as anyone else can tell, lame nerd aggression

"Consequences to your actions" indeed. Serious business this is.

Did you join these forums just to argue? What's the deal?

Frankie_Says_Relax

03-26-2008, 12:42 PM

I had my gamerscore zeroed by accident - worse than that I lost my save files associated with that tag. It pissed me off 'coz I had some games I had worked hard for my game saves (GoW on Inferno, 100% complete on Just Cause). The game saves are still there but the account associated with them isn't, and thanks to DRM I can't change them to my new account.

I understand why they DRM saves (mostly due to these cheaters) but I hate that it negatively effects some of us who honestly screw up an account. It really turned me off the 360 for a while but I like the games so I trundled on...

Your vagueness on the subject has me a bit puzzled - How exactly did this "accidental" zeroing happen?

If everything you did to achieve your score was 100% LEGIT, what specific game/achievement on your account caught the eye of MS's automated system? Was it the GoW and Just Cause achievements you listed specifically? Because I don't think those two achievements that you listed could possibly be the specific cause of a zero-ing ... there must have been something else going on, no?

If this was indeed a mistake ... shouldn't you have been able to contact MS and get the situation reversed?

But if you did use a hacked/modified save, then nothing "accidental" happened as far as I can see.

heybtbm

03-26-2008, 12:46 PM

Sure, sport. Sure. And you'd give all those people what for if they had the guts to say it to your undoubtedly rugged and cleft-chinned face. Thanks for demonstrating exactly why i was trying to avoid making an analogy, by the way.

So, i've noticed the two camps have formed on the issue:
A) People who don't really care either way, but think it's shady to be punitive instead of corrective and preventative

B) People who love the decision based on what is, as far as anyone else can tell, lame nerd aggression

"Consequences to your actions" indeed. Serious business this is.

"Lame nerd aggression"? You're the only one in this thread I see with a chip on their shoulder.

Jon R.

03-26-2008, 01:30 PM

Did you join these forums just to argue? What's the deal?

Seeing as most of my meager post count was so far spent, you know, not arguing, i'm going to hazard a wild guess and say "no".

Anything else you'd like to do to emphasize the fact that nothing but bizarre overreactions are the order of the day with this particular topic? Maybe you'd better delete all those non-argumentative posts just to make durn shoor i keeps myself in line.

carlcarlson

03-26-2008, 01:38 PM

6 of your 13 posts have been in this thread (you're right, 6 isn't most of 13). You may not have started out arguing, but I'd say you definitely are now. Snide remarks aren't going to get you too far here (or anywhere for that matter). And heybtbm is right, you seem to be the one who is carrying on, not anyone else. I'm not trying to continue this argument, I'm just pointing out some things. Just take it easy. This is an opinion thing, so there's no right or wrong. If you want to point out your view I suggest you do it calmly and without any accustions in your comments.

Welcome to the forums.

Vectorman0

03-26-2008, 01:54 PM

Seeing as most of my meager post count was so far spent, you know, not arguing, i'm going to hazard a wild guess and say "no".

Anything else you'd like to do to emphasize the fact that nothing but bizarre overreactions are the order of the day with this particular topic? Maybe you'd better delete all those non-argumentative posts just to make durn shoor i keeps myself in line.

Bye. Hopefully the second time is a charm and you don't try to come back again.

mercarian

03-26-2008, 02:00 PM

Really, it's alot like committing a small crime. If I go to the store and shoplift a 6 pack of beer, get caught, then I am looking at a fine, maybe a few days in jail. Great. My work finds out I got a criminal record, I'm likely fired. Disproportionate? Yep. Fair? Sure - my employer gets to decide who works for them, there's no entitlement.

You're not entitled to a gamer score if you cheat. How do you avoid getting your gamer scored wiped? You don't cheat. If it's important to you, don't do it.

To me, it's as fair as you can get. If someone is cheating in one game, they are likely cheating in all the games. Perhaps they just haven't been caught yet. Same as my shoplifting analogy: maybe you haven't stolen from your office, or maybe you haven't been caught.

More to the point - being a cheating ass has repercussions. That's the way life SHOULD be.

Honestly, most cheaters use cheats as crutches as there "bad" players. I think Microsoft did the right thing as far as resetting there scores, but shouldn't label the offenders as cheaters. Too be honest I find the last part to be a bit overkill O_o

G-Boobie

03-26-2008, 02:14 PM

Sure, sport. Sure. And you'd give all those people what for if they had the guts to say it to your undoubtedly rugged and cleft-chinned face. Thanks for demonstrating exactly why i was trying to avoid making an analogy, by the way.

So, i've noticed the two camps have formed on the issue:
A) People who don't really care either way, but think it's shady to be punitive instead of corrective and preventative

B) People who love the decision based on what is, as far as anyone else can tell, lame nerd aggression

"Consequences to your actions" indeed. Serious business this is.

Someone is a wee bit aggro :P
Welcome to NeoGAF at DP!

Hep038

03-26-2008, 11:16 PM

Wow that was a quick ban. Too bad, he seemed to be contributing in another thread with out any problems.

Mangar

03-26-2008, 11:26 PM

meh - Kind of a petty ban really. He argued his points, but was hardly a troll or disruptive.

In regards to the cheating thing: I'm not familiar with X-Box Live cheating, but am overly familiar with it's effect in MMO's. The single biggest deterrent was being caught and outed to the community. I've watched the cheating reputation follow guilds and players for years and throughout multiple games, to the point of players needing to change their names and guilds having to disband just so they could compete or be taken seriously. The asterisk, or whatever you wanna call it that will allow people to automatically spot or know that a guy was caught cheating will serve as a constant and daily form of harassment and ridicule for the cheater in question.

It's something nobody wants to go through. A surprisingly smart move on the part of Microsoft, that I wish MMO's employed more often.

Leo_A

03-27-2008, 12:13 AM

They aren't going after people who use game saves to cheat and get achievements (Sadly), or honest people that had glitches that unlocked achievements when they weren't supposed to.

So far, they've just gotten a handful of the most well known cheaters who hack their profile to get their achievements, or use the recovered accounts glitch, in order to set a example and act as a deterrant for others.

Some examples include Jagriff, SripClub, Sufoor, and a few other idiots that frequent the achieve360points forum and other similar sites to learn how to cheat to get their achievements.

Andred

03-27-2008, 12:31 AM

I think this is fantastic. Cheaters ruin the gameplay experience for everyone they come in contact with. The only way to deter cheaters is to make it less appealing to cheat. Kudos, MS.

Snapple

03-27-2008, 12:44 AM

The reason you zero their gamerscore is simple. You have to punish them harshly enough to make it not worth cheating in the first place.

It's like, if you steal a car, and if you get caught, the only punishment is that you have to give the car back, then there's no reason to not try and steal it anyway. No risk/high reward. That would be the same case for cheaters on XBL. If you only took away their cheating achievements, then it's like, "Oh well, at least I tried to get away with it. I'm no worse than I started." If you go the extra mile and take away both the stuff that they cheated on, and the stuff they earned, only then is it a deterrent for other potential cheaters.

Daria

03-27-2008, 01:15 AM

meh - Kind of a petty ban really. He argued his points, but was hardly a troll or disruptive.

Considering Vectorman's second charm remake I think it's safe to bet that Jon R. was an alias of a previously banned troll.

Vectorman0

03-27-2008, 10:52 AM

Considering Vectorman's second charm remake I think it's safe to bet that Jon R. was an alias of a previously banned troll.

Bingo.

jcalder8

03-27-2008, 10:59 AM

I love it when cheaters get what's coming to them.

fcw3

03-27-2008, 11:38 AM

I like it. May it serve as a wake-up call to all those that think the rules don't apply to them.

XBox Live belongs to Microsoft. By playing in their yard, you agree to play and be bound by their rules. If you don't like it, go play somewhere else.

If I have a complaint about it, it is that there is no appeal.

But I can understand why. The whole "arguing on the internet" thing.

The automated process has reviewed the account and found abnormalities.
Set points = 0
Next Account

What's to argue ?

FRED

smork

03-27-2008, 11:42 AM

Your vagueness on the subject has me a bit puzzled - How exactly did this "accidental" zeroing happen?

If everything you did to achieve your score was 100% LEGIT, what specific game/achievement on your account caught the eye of MS's automated system? Was it the GoW and Just Cause achievements you listed specifically? Because I don't think those two achievements that you listed could possibly be the specific cause of a zero-ing ... there must have been something else going on, no?

If this was indeed a mistake ... shouldn't you have been able to contact MS and get the situation reversed?

But if you did use a hacked/modified save, then nothing "accidental" happened as far as I can see.

No no no, it wasn't anything like that at all. When i bought my 360 I had no internet at my apartment, so i had an offline profile only. I got internet a month or two later, and in the interim i had finished a few games and earned a few thou achievements.

I tried to migrate my profile to an online one, but "smork" was taken (hence why i use "smork KL" now, see gamercard). I made this new profile, charged it up with credit, then realized I couldn't just copy my old saves to the new ID. Somehow in the process of trying to convert my saves I deleted my old offline profile. I recreated an offline only profile with the same name, didn't recognize the saves.

I called MS customer support and they said I screwed myself and nothing could be done. It's really my own fault for not thinking or researching, but i was eager to get online...

It's really isn't a big deal. The crap thing is I don't even play online unless it's with my friends so there would be no point to me cheating!

smork

03-27-2008, 11:48 AM

Sure, sport. Sure. And you'd give all those people what for if they had the guts to say it to your undoubtedly rugged and cleft-chinned face. Thanks for demonstrating exactly why i was trying to avoid making an analogy, by the way.

So, i've noticed the two camps have formed on the issue:
A) People who don't really care either way, but think it's shady to be punitive instead of corrective and preventative

B) People who love the decision based on what is, as far as anyone else can tell, lame nerd aggression

"Consequences to your actions" indeed. Serious business this is.

This cat is pretty funny, eh? I wasn't trying to pick a fight; it's just the freakin' internet.

Oh well, enjoy the ban, whoever you were.

Frankie_Says_Relax

03-27-2008, 04:29 PM

No no no, it wasn't anything like that at all. When i bought my 360 I had no internet at my apartment, so i had an offline profile only. I got internet a month or two later, and in the interim i had finished a few games and earned a few thou achievements.

I tried to migrate my profile to an online one, but "smork" was taken (hence why i use "smork KL" now, see gamercard). I made this new profile, charged it up with credit, then realized I couldn't just copy my old saves to the new ID. Somehow in the process of trying to convert my saves I deleted my old offline profile. I recreated an offline only profile with the same name, didn't recognize the saves.

I called MS customer support and they said I screwed myself and nothing could be done. It's really my own fault for not thinking or researching, but i was eager to get online...

It's really isn't a big deal. The crap thing is I don't even play online unless it's with my friends so there would be no point to me cheating!

Well, that makes sense.

And it sucks that there are so many restrictions on non-cheating individuals who need to transfer data/gamertags to new units/new accounts, etc.

Perkar

03-30-2008, 08:52 AM

smork: when did the reset occur? your tag now says you have 8000g+.

Bluteg

03-31-2008, 02:23 AM

smork

03-31-2008, 03:30 AM

smork: when did the reset occur? your tag now says you have 8000g+.

Geez, I guess it would have been around March or so last year. I don't remember what my gamerscore was like around then, but maybe 3000 or so. I know I had a perfect 1000 on Just Cause, all the offline achievements for GoW, ~30-40 hours of EDF (since then I went back from the beginning and finished 100%), 20-30 hours in Enchant Arm (never restarted), alot of DOA4 achievements. Probably a few more I can't think of.

I'm not much of a gamerscore whore, though 2000 points of mine or so came from playing super easy sports games with a friend who is one...

G-Boobie

03-31-2008, 05:16 AM

The only problem I'm afraid of is sometimes my internet connection dies or I go visit friends without broadband and bring my 360. Achievements are added to your account when you log back on XBL and dateless much like the game save loading. From mid Dec. - Jan. I was without internet access and accumulated like 2000~ points. If something like that happens again and a shit ton of points appear at once what prevents MS from thinking I cheated my way into getting them?

After reading a bunch of internet crap about this, I'm pretty sure(but not positive) that this whole thing was to specifically target a few very public and infamous abusers. At least, that's the sense I got reading the threads at Xbox, 1UP and so on.

Of course, it's Microsoft so something or someone will get savagely boned that probably shouldn't. Oh well.

ProgrammingAce

03-31-2008, 02:28 PM

The only problem I'm afraid of is sometimes my internet connection dies or I go visit friends without broadband and bring my 360. Achievements are added to your account when you log back on XBL and dateless much like the game save loading. From mid Dec. - Jan. I was without internet access and accumulated like 2000~ points. If something like that happens again and a shit ton of points appear at once what prevents MS from thinking I cheated my way into getting them?

The console still records the date the points were gained. For some reason it's just not shown on the website unless you're connected to LIVE at the time. I'm not really sure why.