Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

Gabe — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:32:01 GMT

jas88: Perhaps you're thinking of SNL's All-Drug Olympics bit on Weekend Update. Here's the link to view it on NBC's site: www.nbc.com/.../1198068

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

DoctorX — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 07:50:28 GMT

I am quite sure the new Visual Studio user interface is a bleedthrough from such a universe...

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

jas88 — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 15:09:06 GMT

Apparently Second Life has its own "limbo" for this - a cornfield where you can be banished for some time to regret your evil deeds before you can re-enter virtual society. A neat concept.

The idea of an alternative cheat-friendly universe makes a lot of sense in some ways. I recall a similar suggestion for the Olympics (or similar contest), where cheating would be officially permitted. No more trying to find subtle ways around drug-testing, just 'roid up to the eyeballs and see what happens! (Knowing what happens with steroid abuse for weight-lifting, though, probably NOT a good idea in practice. The muscles get stronger, the ligaments and tendons don't. A nasty fate.)

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

Muzer — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 17:12:15 GMT

A game that I play (that still has a reasonably active online community) has an interesting history of cheating.

Originally the online server had ranks. This was back in 1998/99 (nobody is quite sure). However, these were very easy to hack, as people hosted their own games via the communal lobby - the host's game then reported back to the server who won. Therefore, the ranking system was subsequently hacked and later removed, with the still-unfulfilled promise that they would be reinstated when a more secure system is put in place.

Around the same time or perhaps slightly afterwards, one coder reverse-engineered and found quite a few flaws in the ingame online protocol. He therefore exploited them and created a cheat application that he distributed only to his close friends. Of course, as ever, one of his close friends released it on the net and all hell broke loose.

Most people would just leave it there. However, this developer actually loved the game, so he then created another program that anyone in an online game could run to effectively counter and disable all the effects of his first program, and released this for public consumption. He did a very good job of it, and later implemented Windows XP support as well (which was, at the time, non-existent) via this program.

He made such a good job of it, in fact, that he was given the source code for the game to develop semi-official updates for it. To this day, he and another keen developer picked up along the way are still releasing updates for the game, and it has become very hard to hack online with a solid protocol - it's turn-based so the game engines each play back the same set of moves and verify that there are no synchronisation errors; therefore, local mods have no effect over the internet. For a long time now, there has been absolutely no online cheating aside from things like macros, etc. which aren't much use in the game anyway aside from showing off.

(I won't be surprised if some people can guess the game from all this)

(damn MSDN commenting not working properly)

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

Krunch — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 14:17:02 GMT

As mentioned in other comments, this has been implemented by Rockstar Games for Max Payne 3. Reference: www.rockstargames.com/.../taking-aim-at-cheaters-in-max-payne-3.html

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

Tod — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 13:45:04 GMT

Team Fortress 2, however, allows people to mod their servers all they want, and since most of the game logic runs on the server, it means you can turn the game into a completely different game. That's how I think it should be, I just wish they would mark them more clearly because it's a bit confusing for new players. Of course that also means you can go into "achievement servers" and "idle servers" to get achievements and items easily, which doesn't really matter much.

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

Gubment Cheez — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 07:10:22 GMT

I love the idea of having the irony Badge. it should have a perk alongside it whereby when you have the irony badge and you are playing games, whenever another character aims at you, you freeze and stand there for a second. you can look around, and you can hear and you can be killed, but you can't trigger or fire weapons, and you can't move until some time passes, and then you unfreeze and you can move again.

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

Daniel Neely — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:24:20 GMT

THe MAZZTer: JTAG is an IEEE debugging standard for embedded hardware; it's useful for much more than just cheating in console games.

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

asdbsd — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:59:57 GMT

They had something similar running at dirty.ru, where all the banned users were sent to the Leprosorium where they had no rules and elected their own mod every week to govern the chaos. And if that mod got downvoted to hell later then you basically had anarchy till the next elections. Then guess what? In a certain circles Leprosorium became more popular than the original site so they made it into a separate thing, and now if you get banned on dirty.ru you're just banned, end of story. (And as a more recent development, the Leprosorium is losing in popularity too, after the rise and fall of the imageboards where you don't even need to be banned to join).

re: Raymond learns about some of the things people do to get banned on Xbox LIVE

Shankar Unni — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:15:56 GMT

That's an absolutely fantastic idea. I've felt the same way about PEDs in sports, too.

Just like we used to have the old distinction between "amateur" and "professional", you could now have "clean" vs "PED", or "clean" vs "hacked/modded". Let the modded folks hang out together. Perhaps there's even some entertainment value in watching modded games/sports, to see how far people are willing to push themselves for 15 minutes of fame..