Xbox 360 Fanboy

Major Nelson has posted a warning on his blog to all the folks out there thinking about sharing their Xbox Live accounts or using altered game saves to cheat at Gamerscore. In short, don't do either one. Major Nelson uses the example of giving someone your account so they can gather all the skulls in Halo 3 for you. If said person were to download XBLA games or movies onto that account, there is basically nothing Microsoft can do for you. The only recourse is for Microsoft to cancel the account altogether, and you'll still be out any MS Points spent by whoever you gave your account to.

Major Nelson also lays down a warning to anyone using artificial means to increase their Gamerscore. He notes that such accounts may have their gamerscore removed altogether and any achievements earned on such an account will not be able to be reacquired. And, as you might expect, such an account (and the console on which it resides) could also be banned from Xbox Live entirely.

We're not sure what prompted the warning (an increase in one or both activities perhaps), but we're sure it's good advice. Besides, what's the point of cheating to get Gamerscore? Where's the fun in that? Remember kids, if you cheat to inflate your Gamerscore, you're no better than a pro athlete.

Emergence Day was supposed to be a celebration. A celebration of chainsaws, headshots, and curb stomping. It looks like it was a celebration of something else entirely: cheating. Remember the hubbub about not having friends in ranked matches of Gears? It looks like it was all for naught, as getting into ranked matches with your friends is easy as hell. All you have to do is host a game and your friends find your name in the host list. So, in pursuit of points and prizes, there were plenty of stacked teams yesterday. Gamer Andy tells of a particularly nefarious exploit using 5 people. "But GOW uses teams of four," you say, and right you are. The fifth person is actually on the opposite team, a saboteur for whatever clan is trying to rise to the top of the leaderboards.

That not cheatery enough for you? How about the fact that the host has the power to start the match at any time, whether all members have clicked "Ready" or not? This makes it easy to stack games with uneven teams of 4v3 or even 4v2. Easy, ranked pickings for anyone.

But wait, there's more. Another nasty exploit can be employed during execution matches. In execution, players can only be killed via curb stomp or execution. After a predetermined amount of "bleed out" time, a downed player will simply revive. So, cheaters start by stacking a 4v3 game, execute 2 opposing players, and leave a third alive. The third player is then shot down, but not executed. Why? Because downing a player is worth more points than executing them. Once the player revives, cheaters shoot him down again, wait for him to revive, rinse, repeat. This continues for the duration of the round. This also leaves the victims with an unfortunate choice: quit a ranked match and risk negative feedback from cheaters, or stay and endure fruitless minutes of death and rebirth.

We'd like to believe that all this cheating was merely for the sake of winning some of the Emergence Day prizes, but we know better. Sure, cheaters may have hoped for a prize, but they would have cheated regardless. The unfortunate truth is that some people are just jerks (especially Pod 6).

A lot of these problems could be solved simply by tweaking the lobby system -- not displaying host names, not letting hosts force start matches, etc. Hopefully, this will be addressed in the upcoming patch. Has anyone experienced these exploits online?

[Via Inner Angst]

GamerScore whore awfullygood, from the appropriately named blog, "Confessions of a GamerScore Whore," describes how the Fall update made life more difficult for achievement cheaters:

With the Fall Update, Microsoft has introduced a hybrid locking mechanism that effectively harms the first method [ for swapping game saves] and squelches the second method. Method 1 has been smacked silly because the vast majority of existing game save files created on the previous update do not work on the Fall update software version. This renders those files useless until unscrupulous members decide to re-upload hundreds of saves based from the new dashboard version. This will most likely take months upon months or possibly never happen for very unpopular games.

Method 2 has been rendered useless as new console specific security is in place. Gamerscore thirsty gamers are taunted with a Corrupt Save message when the bypass method attempts to be used. Obviously, the new security may eventually be cracked by code junkies, but those game saves may also have to be re-uploaded. I'm unsure of any repercussions to method 3. I've always found trading accounts to be supremely idiotic as anyone could keep your account for themselves. Anyway, if anyone has heard if method 3 has been affected, let me know.

Former champ ST TheKing quit the GamerScore race after the upper reaches of the leaderboard became became clogged with fakes, including awfullygood himself (who admits he was cheating just to keep up with the Joneses). Sure Xbox 360 achievements are intangible and useless, but they are fun to earn and these a-hole cheats make a mockery of every pallid kid who spent a three day weekend in the basement going after that final Lumines Live time attack get. For God's sake, if putting endless hours into a crap game like Bomberman gives you a limited sense of accomplishment, stealing a game save must give you even less. Of course, these changes won't stop cheating, just slow it down for a bit. But it does serve as a reminder that you're not entitled to an elite score, unless you're playing that other console.