Marvel Comics' Punisher #1, courtesy of Comic Collector Live 

After we got our answers back from Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten regarding its newly announced punishment for people determine to be cheating its Gamerscore and Achievement Point systems (but before we saw your comments on the previous post), we saw a couple of areas that still hadn't been clarified to our satisfaction. So we whipped up a couple of additional questions and shot them over to Whitten via Microsoft's PR agency. Here's what Whitten told us in response to our follow-ups.

How long is the period of time during which Microsoft will affix the label of "cheater" to offending Xbox Live members?

We intend to remove the label over time, although the original achievements will remain reset. We don’t have a specific time frame that we are detailing right now. In the end, it is up to the individual player to prove that they won’t do it again.

Is the rescindment of Achievement Points done on a per-achievement basis or a per-game basis? In other words, if someone cheated their way through half of the campaign of Halo 3, but never finished the game before your punishment was handed down, can he or she complete the rest of the game fairly and still receive the corresponding Achievement Points for the second half of the game? If not, why not?

 Poster for "The Star Chamber," courtesy of Moovies

There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him.
--from "The Scarlet Letter," by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new form of rough justice for those who would dare to cheat its system of Achievement Points and Gamerscores. Offenders would have their gamerscore--a mark of their progression through various Xbox 360 games--reset to zero; their specifically forfeited achievement points permanently removed, never to again be regained; and their gamercard emblazoned a tag indicating that "They've been caught cheating." Intrigued by the frontier mentality behind such public shaming of scofflaws, we reached out to Microsoft with some questions that hadn't fully been answered by their FAQ. Here's what Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten told us via email.

When did you decide to take the steps that were publicly outlined today to punish people who are determined to be tampering with their game saves?

We have always invested in upholding the Live Terms of Use through penalizing violations with user and or console bans. The method of having the individual's gamerscore reset is a more measured approach that addresses this particular form of behavior.

What percentage of Xbox Live users have you determined to have tampered with their game saves?

More than 1 billion Achievements have been unlocked since Xbox 360 launched in November, 2005 and only a small percentage of Xbox Live members have cheated to gain more gamerscore. While we cannot release the number of gamers who will be affected by this, we can tell you that the number is very small.

What steps, if any, had you been taking in the past to address this problem? If so, why did you determine them to be insufficient?

1. CLM...Chicken? Metanet's evisceration of XBLA lineup now a dead link
2. Wii...got problems: what needs to be fixed to make WiiWare better
3. TRI...force feedback: reflections on how Zelda must evolve
4. RND...Let him go!/This center, we will not let him go!