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Thread: 360 Achievement cheaters to have their gamerscores set back to zero...ouch!

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    Great Puma (Level 12) heybtbm's Avatar
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    Default 360 Achievement cheaters to have their gamerscores set back to zero...ouch!

    Gamerscore-owned!!!111!!1

    http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/...orrection.aspx

    Seriously though...I love this.
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    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.

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    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?
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    Quote Originally Posted by drewbrim View Post
    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.
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    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".

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nesmaster View Post
    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.


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    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...

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    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"

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    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!)?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon R. View Post
    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.
    Last edited by G-Boobie; 03-26-2008 at 02:53 AM. Reason: Clarity. Like, fo reals

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    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...

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    Quote Originally Posted by G-Boobie View Post
    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon R. View Post
    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.

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    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?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon R. View Post
    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...

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    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon R. View Post
    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.

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    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.
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    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.
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