Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

re: Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

stephentotilo — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:17:23 GMT

Good follow-ups.

But what if you were playing Gears of War faithfully through co-op campaign with one friend and then, behind the friend's back, went and played the game co-op with someone else? What kind of label would that behavior receive?

re: Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

xrayzwei — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:29:15 GMT

Thanks for getting further clarification on the issue N'Gai. A comment on each question:

1. "We don’t have a specific time frame that we are detailing right now." As a community member I would have prefered that this be decided before action had been taken against these other community members. "In the end, it is up to the individual player to prove that they won’t do it again." Also I would prefer to understand and have process in place for dealing with these individuals. Will they be permenatly banned for future infractions? What options do I have for preventing them from joining my public games?

2. This is per achievement. My question would be if I view this person's game history have they reset the points per achievement to zero with the badge complete, or does it appear that the person never got the achievement at all? How does it look when I compare games with one of these players? Points wise, sure they may have zero, but will these community members point to their profiles and say "See I unlocked it, they just took my points."

re: Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

SuperEffective — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:35:50 GMT

I hate to sound cranky, but this whole 'we're cracking down on Xbox cheaters' thing seems like PR in the extreme.

Wouldn't you say that most users, if they have a problem with 'cheating', are really 1,000x more concerned with multiplayer racism, threats, and general griefing?

I mention this only because I'd been an XBL user for a few years and have recently started playing a few games on my PC. And the difference between rented servers (as in TF2) and XBL matches is like night and day. The latency is better (as it's not being run P2P) and surprisingly, there is always an admin on to shoo out the riff raff.

I guess I'm just saying: I'm surprised that the PC online game world, which has the reputation of being 'anything goes', is much better moderated than XBL is. And you're paying for it!

Fixing achievement points -- I dunno. I just think it has to be dead last on most folks' wishlists. I wanna know when people are going to start being banned for ruining others fun in a more meaningful way. And I suspect that Microsoft is going to cling to their wild west mentality when it comes to XBL: kids, if you wanna call someone any epithet you can think of, rest assured that you're safe and sound.

But getting achievement points without properly buying all the titles? That's a paddlin.

re: Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

TheEggplant — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:16:35 GMT

I'm sorry if anyone thinks that this a legitimate use of resources, but the whole thing sounds ridiculous. How about taking the time and money involved in this idiocy and, maybe using it to craft better customer service, or more stable hardware, or my personal bone of contention, better backwards compatibility.

Microsoft as a company seems to have forgotten who keeps them in business. They are going to crash and burn hard if they continue down their current path.

re: Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

Evan Narcisse — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:20:04 GMT

@StephenTotilo: I think the answer to your question is "grounds for divorce".

re: Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

10rd Ben — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:13:18 GMT

I wonder if MSoft have considered the possibility that this could actually be *counter*-productive... they are GIVING AWAY a free /ultimate gamer score/ that says "I can hax games, lol" - Thinking about it this way, I'd almost want it myself!

re: Behind the Scarlet 'C', Continued: In Which Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten Answers Some Follow-Ups About Punishing Gamerscore Cheats

factory — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:54:29 GMT

i have a question. who cares?..if u are that much of an an achievement whore that u need to cheat or steal the points, then u have some serious issues that can't be dealt with by being labeled anything.the points can be fun in the right context, but i know too many people who rent games with easy points and it cheapens the experience altogether for everyone.i liked the idea at first, but now i wish they wouldn't have created the system at all.anyone who played the avatar game to get the points should be branded on live as well... with a huge L