Banning for In-Game Glitches?

by Zach Niblick , COMMUNITY WRITER

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Tags: Xbox, infinity ward, Bans, Glitching, Mirosoft, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

"Microsoft has said that it will hand out temporary bans to Live accounts caught using the exploit."-MTV

Modded controller use? Sure! A perfectly acceptable consequence. But banning for an in-game bug? Now that's a bit much.

Users are being handed a temporary ban on their Xbox Live accounts for exploiting the "Javelin" glitch, a dandy piece of code that turns the player into a walking Predator missile, and subsequently, is spreading across the web like wildfire to millions of other gamers that are just itching to fulfill their inherent desires to be one of those suicide dudes from Serious Sam.

This glitch is in-game, meaning it wasn't tampered with by gamers, or uncovered in some hidden code (ala hot coffee). Infinity Ward is solely responsible for this, and while little bugs of this type are completely understandable in a game, as long as a patch is released, when accounts are being banned for an internal screw up, that's too far.

PC gamers already want Infinity Ward's head on their level 68 Dark Elf's spear for the introduction of IWnet, but by now pissing off the console users, it seems like they're practically handing out the torches and pitchforks.

We all used the rock glitch in World at War, and we all walked on thin air on Crossfire in CoD 4, but no one was ever banned. A patch was released, and all exploitative gamers sighed an accepting "aw man" at the end of their fun, but kept on fragging and leveling up our M4A1 with Red Tiger and an ACOG.

Infinity Ward might not be solely to blame for the bannings, it could just be an action taken only by Microsoft. Either way, gamers are ticked. Harmless fun is harmless fun. If you don't want to your game of Search and Destroy to serve as a haven for suicide bombers, then just play privately for a few days until the patch is out.

Being banned for exploiting an in-game glitch is ten steps past ridiculous, and I have a feeling it will piss off more than a few Xbox fanboys.

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Comments (14)

Jon Cole

December 03, 2009

Terms of Use

5. How You May Not Use the Service.

In using the Service, you may not:

- exploit a bug, or make an unauthorized modification, to any software or data to gain unfair advantage in a game , contest, or promotion.

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In other words, you agree to those terms when you sign up for Xbox Live. It's not even close to "ten steps past ridiculous" and I'd go as far as to say that Microsoft is taking it easy on users by limiting the bans to one day (or two weeks, on a second offense).

Zach Niblick

December 03, 2009

But honestly, not many people read the Terms of Service that thoroughly. You're completely right and you have an excellent point, and I'm speaking more to the masses here, because there were many other glitches in past Call of Duty games that yielded no consequence for their exploitation. I know it may be in the Terms of Service, but Microsoft should remain a little more focused on fan service and how this action is pretty inconsistent with how they've reacted in the past. I think a simple slap on the wrist would've sufficed.

Alex Gagne

December 03, 2009

I don't believe it is silly at all. Patching is difficult business, and fixing one thing can break ten other things. In the time it takes for a patch to roll out, someone's time can already be ruined in the game; and that cuts their profits for DLC.

To be more blunt, if you are going to use an obvious and unfair glitch in order to win at a game and make other people's time frustrating because you choose to break the game, you have whatever is coming to you. I think one warning is fair, but after that I hope you never play the game again.

Alex Gagne

December 03, 2009

@ Zach.

I think a simple slap on the wrist would've sufficed.

A temporary ban is a slap on the wrist.

Jon Cole

December 03, 2009

A temporary ban is a slap on the wrist.

Agreed. Compared to a permanent ban, one day is very generous.

Zach Niblick

December 03, 2009

I know it's not a huge punishment, but one nonetheless. I just don't feel it's right to ban someone for doing an in-game glitch.

William Bennett Schink Jr.

December 03, 2009

I'm mixed about this, while I do think people should be punished for ruining the game for others through glitches, sometimes the glitches aren't game-breaking, and end up becoming a major part of strategies on certain maps for some games, occasionally they are important enough to warrant staying in. So I'm divided on the issue, but in the case of these MW2 glitches, I think they disturb the natural order of the game to the point that they deserve a response.

Brett Bates

December 03, 2009

Well, that explains what the hell was happening in that matched I played the other night.

Jeffrey Sandlin

December 03, 2009

I say it's a perfectly legitimate reaction to the situation. This glitch seems to have the potential to grind the entire game to a halt and microsoft wants people to keep playing it and being satisfied with the experience as much as possible. So temp banning a couple of cheaters to scare people into playing nice is a preferable option to letting MW2 get a bad reputation as an unplayable glitchy mess of an online game and potentially putting a dent in the games holiday sales, and in turn their profits.

Jon McInturff

December 03, 2009

So temp banning a couple of cheaters to scare people into playing nice is a preferable option to letting MW2 get a bad reputation as an unplayable glitchy mess

I agree completely with Microsoft. If they have the legal right, nobody should be complaining about a temporary ban. So what if they can't play ONLINE for a couple days? Worse things have happened, and people have moved on.

I'd have to say that this post is a little unfounded. It's almost the same as when TF2 players were reprimanded over the incidents with the hats. Just let it be.

Patrick King

December 04, 2009

Instead of a ban, it'd be nice if there was a more detailed set of metadata associated with players on XBL. That is, if offending players could be branded as cheaters, and if you could screen them out, it would let them play in their own sandbox away from the more serious gamers. Is that an oxymoron? Anyway...

Something like this could be automated if you could see stats of how a person got their kills. If the explosion frag to good old gun-killin' ratio is suspiciously high, kick 'em from the group. If they knife too much for your liking, you could see that and choose to not play with them.

I'll admit there are issues with this idea, as I suspect the vast majority of gamers want to just get in and play. To that extent, maybe MS has the right approach here - just get rid of the offending players and keep the majority happy. It just seems like the ideal scenario for Infinity Ward and MS is to allow (and encourage) as many people as possible to play (and pay).

Mike Hawkins

December 05, 2009

The first guy had it right. Don't sign things you didn't read because if you do you may be sorry. MS says don't cheat in the terms of service. There's nothing ridiculous about them enforcing the rules you agreed to play by.

The argument that they didn't enforce these rules before holds no water. They're enforcing them now so don't do it. You promised you wouldn't.

Tom Heistuman

December 05, 2009

The terms of service aren't even filled with outrageous legalese. Everything is spelled out pretty clearly and if you want to file a complaint on someone all the options there are taken from the ToS.

As for banning people, good. I wish it was for a week or a month. I'd never heard of or seen this being used (never walked in the air on CoD4 either...how's that work?) until the news of the bans hit. I couldn't play a single game today without seeing at least one asshole doing it. Ruined the entire experience and eventually just quit along with many other team members.

I personally don't use glitches because I don't want someone associating my gamertag with this kind of behavior. It's stupid and so are the morons who use it. "Hurr hurr looky me, I's a walking booooomb!"

Bobby Krell

December 06, 2009

I know it's not a huge punishment, but one nonetheless. I just don't feel it's right to ban someone for doing an in-game glitch.

This isn't a case of changing your colour by accident, where it has no basis on the gameplay. This glitch requires a specific action to be done to trigger it, with the specific intent of granting an unfair advantage. Is it the dev's fault? yes, but you can't get every bug before launch. Are they fixing it? Most Assuredly. In the meantime, there's morons intentionally using this glitch in ladder matches to attain a rank they can't do so normally. You don't think it's fair that people are being banned for the glitch, fine. I don't think it's fair that these people are getting a free ride to the top of the rankings because they know how to cheat. At least in the case of the temp bans, it's a effort to keep the game in balance. What's so fair about using an illegal cheat to win a ranked game?

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