U.S. Army to d00dz - We're Coming for You

Thanks to cdagobah for mentioning a post up on the America's Army game site. Executive Producer Phil DeLuca posts a message updating the community on a recent anti-hacking campaign they've initiated, and has a clear message for would-be wrongdoers. From the post: "Allow me to speak directly to the bad guys for a moment: When you get banned, know that we know and have records showing you were doing something that's a violation of terms of service, breaks your EULA, and also happens to be against the law. We know who you are, and can track down where you play from. We have incontrovertible proof you did something illegal. The Army is angry, and we're coming for you. "

Its About Time

[CyberVenom]

America's Army official servers all run unmoderated, relying on the automated PunkBuster system to weed out hackers. Unfortunately it just plain doesn't work. AA has been getting as bad as Red Faction was with hacks recently. I hope they do something effective, although threats may not be the best way to do it. They ought to look into something other than punkbuster, for example UT had quite a few independantly-developed anti-cheat mods which worked quite well, and AA runs on the UT engine anyway... I'm tired of rapid-fire 203s, dammit!

and yet their FAQ says...

[Aropax20]

The game site's FAQ [americasarmy.com] assures users:

Player and Army Privacy

"Finally privacy is a big concern for us. Players register under a userid and gameplay information cannot be traced to an individual's real identity."

Obviously, anything online can track all sorts of information about a user (duh), I guess I just find it funny they offer the warm and fuzzy privacy gurantees on one page, and then threaten(?) "naughty" users elsewhere on the site, after they get a mad-on.

Deluca Has a History of this sort of thing

[Crashmarik]

Anyone whoe remembers the whole Kesmai/EA/Aol Multiplayer battletech fiasco knows this well. The problems is his cures are often worse than the disease. In MPBT he used players that volunteered as helpers to police the game. Unfortunately MPBT being divided into five very large teams more than a few of these "Helpers" became their teams ultimate weapons.

The problem was further aggravated by the political nature of the game. As accusations against the "Volunteer Police" Grew they had to defend themselves. Back and Forth it went, the simple message that having people who had invested years into their various team being refs was a very bad idea, never got the respect it deserve

I don't play Americas Army but for Phills sake and the games sake, I hope he has payed help this time and some effective means to actually identify the hackers and deal with them. The last time he had none of these and it was a disaster.