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United States Entertainment Games

U.S. Army to d00dz - We're Coming for You 183

Posted by Zonk from the i-am-now-officially-scared dept.
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. "
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U.S. Army to d00dz - We're Coming for You

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  • YEA!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Squatchman ( 844798 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:32PM (#11341146)
    .... and we know you have weapons of mass destruction hidden somewhere! Come Clean!

  • Give me a fucking break... (Score:5, Funny)

    by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:35PM (#11341172) Homepage Journal
    We know who you are, and can track down...
    The Army is angry, and we're coming for you.

    Nice to see that the Army is doing something useful. I wouldn't want any of these teenagers walking around the streets.

    First they break the EULA, next they're killing babies. Gotta stop this evil when it starts!
    • No, nothing like that. They cheat, they'll get hassled. Will they go to jail? Nah, but they'll get hassled.

      It's pretty plain to me...if you want to cheat, don't play AA. Go cheat on Counterstrike like everyone else does you little wienies....

    • Re:Give me a fucking break... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:55PM (#11341470) Journal
      These aren't just teenagers. These are cheaters, trolls, and in general, assholes. Nothing the army will do to them will fit their sins. I for one would endorse a policy involving locking them in cages with silver back gorillas overnight, but that's considered cruel, and gorrillas are expensive, so I guess this is better than nothing.
    • The Army is mad that "Hackers" are ruining their recruiting tool. While they probably have some legal ground to stand on with regard to "all accounts and derivative products, are the property of the United States Army. When you tamper with the game ... you're misusing Army property - and, worse, you're misusing US Army computer programs and equipment." for espionage charges. However, using that law to prosecute people for cheating on a video game is definitely not in the spirit of the law.

      The Army must be
      • This guy has to be talking out of his ass. I doubt the Army cares much about people cheating on a video game. It's just a fucking video game.

        If the Army tried to 'come after' people for cheating, they'd catch hell from all over the place for not doing their job.

        The Army isn't exactly supposed to be operating against US citizens.

  • Its About Time (Score:5, Informative)

    by CyberVenom ( 697959 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:38PM (#11341204)
    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!

  • Since when is it illegal to use a wall-hack or aimbot? ;)

    Seriously, does anyone know the details?

    • Re:Since when... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:49PM (#11341380) Homepage Journal
      It's really funny to see lawyers misuse legal jargon. It's not illegal, it's unlawful. You agreed to a terms of service, and by violating those terms of service you are in breach of contract. They can sue you, they can't call the police and have you arrested.

      That said, if they then ban you and you continue to play under a fake account or something similar, you are now illegally accessing a computer system, and that you will do time for (probably more than a rapist does on average too).

      • Well - this is plain ignorant. If they hack the site, or apply a DOS attack or some such against the AA servers, then that (and many other similar activities) are against the law. Further, these servers are Federal computers which makes it a Federal Case!

        Lastly - don't forget - these guys have REAL guns...real BIG guns! ;-)
      • I guess I'll just have to spend more time raping and pilliaging. Too bad. Cheating on computer games was such a fun diversion.

  • America, **** yeah (Score:2, Insightful)

    by t2h3c ( 821788 )
    Our tax dollars, hard at work. Doesn't this make you proud to be an American?

  • I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by j-turkey ( 187775 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:42PM (#11341271) Homepage

    I've never played this game, and know little about it...but if I'm understanding this correctly, some people used some cheats in a video game, and a developer is insinuating criminal repercussions? Is it safe to assume that there were no real monetary losses?

    Yeah. I'll believe that the federal government will actually prosecute when pigs fly.

    Inmate 1: What are you in for?
    Inmate 2: First degree murder, but I'll be out in 4 more years. What about you?
    Inmate 1: I cheated in a video game, which was technically misusing US Army property. I'll be in here for a long time.
    Inmate 2: Daaaaaaaaaaamn.

    • Well considering this is the military... they already have their own tribunals set up. If convicted, lock them up at "Gitmo" forever and no one will be the wiser. ;)
    • ...handy to have on your record if the Draft is reinstated.

      Sgt: "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

      NAR: And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench ne

    • Inmate 2: Bend over.
    • Well, the Army is more likely to do prosecute a cheater than a commercial company. A commercial company has to spend it's own money to prosecute somebody, while the military has a large budget and access to all government resources. I'm a SysAdmin on a military post in Germany. When we have a "security incident" we're able to send an RCERT team after them, and other resources are always used as needed. The Government has a lot of money to protect itself with. If it says it wants to do this, it certainly has
    • RFC 1925 - The Twelve Networking Truths:

      (3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.

      http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1925.html [faqs.org]
  • Maybe they should focus on... oh I dont know... Osama Bin Laden?

  • They don't know the "extend" of what we know (Score:3, Funny)

    by pnice ( 753704 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:43PM (#11341291)
    They dont know the extend of what we know, and moreover how we know it. They used up all the knowledge that could have been put towards proofreading.
  • ... will the army rangers who come to arrest me use techniques they learned in the game? Will they all be little camping sniper whores? how many grenades do they get (or am I thinking too much CS here...)??? I took the tutorial, I think I can hold my own.

  • You can get anything you want (Score:5, Funny)

    by quandrum ( 652868 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:51PM (#11341405)
    It's illegal? They're coming after you? What they really mean is if you try and join the army, the future will look like this.

    And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I just got a temp ban from the official servers." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Wallhacking." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
  • Sir, You are a wanker. You are frightening nobody. Stop pretending you are a tough guy and go back to managing your software team.

  • Now I'm scared (Score:4, Interesting)

    by karnat10 ( 607738 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @05:58PM (#11341511)
    Nobody except judiciary has the right to go after me when I've done wrong.

    Everything else breaches separation of powers and / or is plain illegal. Like the RIAA paying retired police offers to play Gestapo. Or the army saying "The Army is angry, and we're coming for you".

    Rather than threatening its own people, I'd prefer the army focusing on defense, and on respecting the law themselves. As a suggestion, they could start in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.
    • Nobody except judiciary has the right to go after me when I've done wrong.
      ...
      I'd prefer the army ... respecting the law themselves.

      Hmm - didn't do the maths on this one did we? They are the US Army, and as you infer, they do not respect the law. I beleive it's been more than adequately demonstrated over the last few years that they are well and truly Above The Law.

      • Re:Now I'm scared (Score:5, Funny)

        by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @07:11PM (#11342463) Homepage Journal
        Not only are they Above The Law, but they're also Hard To Kill and I think it's obvious that these kids are Marked For Death now that the army is Out For Justice. So remember, if you mess with the army your parent's basement may well be Under Siege and you'll be standing On Deadly Ground.
        • Oh we can but dream. Imagine the scene...

          *HEADSHOT*
          *HEADSHOT*
          *HEADSHOT*
          *HEADSHOT*

          k3w1^d00d: LOLZ J00 SUXXOR!!!!1111eleven

          Player1: Bot.

          k3w1^d00d: LOLLLLLLLLOLOLZZZZZ WH4T3V3R L4M3R

          [CPS]janxor: I'm getting the admin

          ColMustd: Screw that I'm calling the army!
    • The judiciary does not have that power. The police do, the prosecutors do, and various alphabet soup agencies do depending on what you did wrong (Stock fraud the FTC comes after you, illegal weapons the DOD, bad medicine the FDA, and so forth). When they do, you're brought in front of the judiciary to decide what to do about it, but the judiciary doesn't come after you. If you refuse to appear in front of the judiciary, the judiciary still doesn't come after you, the police do. The agencies that have the po
      • If I had mod points I'd mod the parent up as one of the I-mods. Government in a nutshell.

        However, the military MUST not come after me in this case, because this case is about disregarding license agreements or the like, and I hope it's still illegal for someone to send the army because of this.

        But then again, this army has been sent further away for even more dubious reasons...
        • When they say, "We're coming for you", they don't mean that literally they will be sending a division of tanks or a squadron of A 10 Warthogs or even a team of LURPs to your house.

          However, the could well use Army resources to develop their case against you. If you interfere with the Army in a tortious or criminal manner, why wouldn't they? In a case like this, where it's not a major security threat, they might not bother law enforcement until they've got all the ducks in a row and the perp ripe for picking
    • While agree with the second half of your statement, I would like to point out that the army is perfectly within their rights to say "The Army is angry and we're coming for you". If the actually DO come for you, let me know, so I can flee to haiti, or something.
    • """No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
      • ... except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger ...

        Yes, special rules apply to the military, but the wording of this makes it clear that this regards internal matters. It doesn't say "in connection with," it say "arising in." That means the 5th amendment does not apply if and only if the situation involves members of the land/naval forces or militia forces when in actual service in a time of war or public danger.

        I have n
        • Exactly. When in actual service.

          But all this means is that when the Army comes after you, it's not going to be extra-legal (air-to-surface missle) nor will the matter be ajudicated in a military court.

          There's nothing preventing the Army from taking this to civilian court. And what's worse, because the alleged illegal acts are taking place on military computers, it's a severe criminal matter.
          • No, that's not what that section means at all.

            That clause outlines the test for whether or not someone can be held without a Grand Jury indictment, nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with which type of court any proceedings are brought in. The amendment as a whole isn't even considered in courts martial, because the only things considered are those contained in the UCMJ.

            It does not prevent the Army (or other military branch) from bringing (or participating in) civil, criminal, or court marti
      • I for one welcome the black apache helicoptors with team delta-force surrounding some script-kiddie's home for being an asshat on the internet.
        I think this should be the next reality show on Fox.

  • Call the marines (Score:5, Funny)

    by Usquebaugh ( 230216 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:02PM (#11341564)
    Dear GI Joe,

    wake up and smell the coffe, war is not about obeying rules. It's about winnning.

    The US army is going to use lawyers because it cannot police it's own servers. I do so look forward to you explaining that to the press.

    Given that once again the US Army cannot deal with problems in a rational, pragmnatic and effective manner I suggest you always do what the army does in this situation. Call for the marines.

  • This might be a good thing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Datamonstar ( 845886 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:12PM (#11341689)
    Cause we all know that only terrorists cheat at online games...

  • yeah, geez! (Score:3, Funny)

    by cbrichar ( 819941 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:14PM (#11341735)
    c'mon guys, this is war! Play fair!

  • Speaking of proof (Score:3, Funny)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:15PM (#11341743) Journal
    We have incontrovertible proof...

    Raise your hand if you've heard that one before [slashdot.org].

  • Wow Somebody tell this guy the war is over (sorta) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jtheletter ( 686279 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:15PM (#11341757)
    Choice quote: Truth be told, the bloodiest day in America's Army Game account history is still ahead of us and we got most of the information leading to that day from the bad guys themselves!

    Throughout the article this guy keeps saying "bad guys" like he was fighting for something tangible and sacred. Get some perspective man, you're booting cheaters from a game server, not saving babies in 'Nam.

    How about: Tampering with software and servers owned or used by the Army is cyber crime.
    Oooooh, oh no! I'm not fully clear on what people are doing that's got General McNads' panties in a bunch, but I'm assuming it's a bit more annoying than just using a wall hack, perhaps people are trying to crash servers and the like, but that happens to every game/website/store on the web! But because it's happened to the army's game, now they're really serious and pissed. Hello, US Gub'ment, this is the sort of "cybercrime" that goes on daily and is ignored or completely fumbled by current law bodies. Now you know what Joe Developer has to deal with daily when he wakes up and his web-store has been hacked to shit. Did you care then? Nope, but apparently now that it's personal it matters. The guy writing this sounds almost surprised by the affront of the "bad guys": 'How dare they hack us! I mean we're the army for crissake!'

    And the bit at the end saying "We're coming for you." Honestly, I think this guy actually believes someone's going to have their house stormed and shot up. At best they'll be sending a lawyer, there will be due process in court, and life will continue as usual. Someone, please, get this over-inflated self-important bastard away from his keyboard and someplace where his gung-ho attitude might actually affect change at the scale he hallucinates. It's a friggin game.

    "My god Er, I can't believe we are standing in the presence of THE Moon Master!"

    • It's a friggin game.

      And here I was thinking it was an attempt to recruit kids into the army.

    • yeh, but read all the comments after it. It scary to see all those cries of HOOAAHH and the effort they go to for the graphical sigs.

      they are all a sorry bunch of losers. wanna be army boys who wouldn't cut it in the real world.

      Reading that dev's post shows that he has the same mindset they all do and although he's just trying to scare the kids into not cheating, I think a lot will believe they're going to have their doors bashed in during some fucking dawn raid.

      bad guys. heh. tosser.
  • They'll knock on your door and threaten jail, but give you the option to enlist instead to put those 'skills' to 'good' use. :-P

  • A Better Response might have been... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ivi ( 126837 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:36PM (#11342036)

    "Thanks for exposing a hole in
    -our- security.

    We'll work hard to plug that hole
    so that others won't be able to
    crawl through it, in future."

    I'm reminded of the Hacker Challenges
    of other security conscious web sites.

  • Dear army. (Score:3, Funny)

    by arcanumas ( 646807 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:37PM (#11342045) Homepage
    Dear United States Army.

    I have been playing Enemy territory for some time and have noticed a lot of cheaters ,aimbots and wallhacks.

    It has come to my attention that you have undertaken the role of punkbuster, only with rifles and live ammo.
    Could you please um, 'solve' the problem on the Enemy terrirory servers please?

    Maybe send these people to obligatory service in Iraq or something?
    Thank you.

  • Finally! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by trawg ( 308495 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @06:43PM (#11342120) Homepage
    As a long-jaded gamer and server admin, all I can say is hooray. Finally, an organisation with the resources to combat cheating kids. To draw an analogy, these guys are the script kiddies of the gaming world - most of them are just silly punks out to ruin the gaming experience for others and have no real idea of how many people they're affecting.

    Sure, non-gamers say "but its just a game", but (to draw another analogy) imagine if every social sports game you played had streakers, people doped up on horse steroids, and people that just walked up to you and started screaming abuse. It would quickly become annoying.

    Of course, in the real world, doing that sort of thing quickly has repercussions (ie, someone smacks your bitch ass up) but online, its a real pain in the ass (especially in a free game with no real mechanism to ban users - like Steam, but that's another kettle of fish) to stop these users from ruining the online experience of others.

    Personally, the thought of Delta Force guys kicking in some random hackers door at 3am and throwing in a couple of flashbangs makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Hell, they could record it on video and put it on the America's Army website and people would PAY MONEY to see it.
  • I guess the Army has to find a war to win somewhere. You'd think that they'd be spending their time and resources getting vehicles and personnel in Iraq armored, but I guess you've got to have priorities.
  • Tampering with software and servers owned or used by the Army is cyber crime.

    Hah, so it isn't a cyber crime to mess with other's computers if they're not owned or operated by the army? Thanks for stating the obvious, Capt. Obbvious.

    Brought to you by Lt. Redundant.

    /Stoped playing AA the moment the first email came back to me with recruiting info

  • EA Games: makes its employees work uncompensated overtime in order to make deadlines (read: in order to keep their jobs). US Army: bans and declares cheaters on game servers to be compromising to national security. One is killing people to make games, the other is killings people for playing... Fitzghon
    • Killing is the wrong word to use AND the people who are being "abused" in both the situations you describe are making decisions of their own free will. Sorry, I'm not crying any tears for them.

  • How an Americas Army player thinks of this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zevets ( 728720 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @07:13PM (#11342483) Journal
    I don't know how many people play AA, but if you don't, let me explain how this works to you.

    The primary hacks are: full auto 203s. Imagine a grenade launcher, add unlimited ammo, and a firing rate of 700 RPM. Imagine maps where there is almost nowhere that cannot be hit. It becomes impossible to deal with. This can also be applied to rocket launchers, sniper rifles, just about any gun in the game can benefit from full auto. Then there are the speed hacks which allow players to run to the objs in about 4 seconds, the obj hacks, where players can take the obj without even being near it, or maybe the respawn hacks, where even if you kill the hacker, he comes right back from the dead. And don't forget a hack that adjusts for the game-physics and run speed, so literally there is no safe thing to do. And don't forget the standard set of aim-bots no fog hacks, etc. All there, and in more numbers than most games, and even more than CS. Almost every server had a blatant hacker on them at anytime, and most had a couple of covert hackers.

    Then there is the problem with the server company having a monopoly on honor servers.(honor is a number displayed by your screen that is a rough indicator of skill, but only kinda) The servers crashed non-stop, the support tickets went unanswered, and generally SCI was a pain in the ass. It went so far as there were Freedom of Information Act requests put on the Army and SCI's contract. There was no response. It took SCI repeated requests to allows us access to PB screenshots, which take a picture of whatever your screen is, and them send them off to the server. But this was hacked too, allowing the hacker to send any image he wants, so on many PBSS it was a picture of tub girl. CVAR checks didn't work because after every crash(usually 3-4 times a day) it resets all server scripts. Every AA player who has played since 1.9 remembers the good 'ole days of HomeLan and admins, who were utterly ruthless.

    Recently Speakeasy's gamefire division has been allowed to rent honor servers, but they currenty don't have PB enabled, so no-one plays on them anyway. But this just started the 10th, so we will need to wait and see.

    There have also been numerous bugs including the "critical error" or "General Protection Faults". In 2.0-2.2 a critical errors would happen non-stop meaning that no AA session lasted for much more than an hour.

    And for people who have been bashing Phil Deluca or [Dev]Skippy, recently a large number of hackers were banned, and that caused a notable improvement in the quality of gaming. Under his control, they also released 2.2.1 which has cut down on the critical errors. Things under skippy are looking up, so I really wouldn't be suprised if you see on CNN in a couple of weeks that "the Army has sued several internet sites for hosting hacks for the Army's free recruiting tool video game, Americas Army".

    We've been through hell, but for some reason AA just has me coming back for more. Some of the 1.9 era maps are brilliantly done(Bridge SE is possibly one of the best maps ever in an online video game) AA is also the only game to have realistic long range combat. Not just twitch shootin, but tactics will almost always win in AA. Don't bash AA if you havn't been in the community for a long time.

    If what Skippy says happens, we are going to be a very happy bunch of gamers.
    • And why exactly does the server allow all of that?

      It's not that hard to keep track of ammo server side, as well as checking for the other things you mentioned. Of course make it completely hack-proof is impossible, but the things you mentioned are hardly impossible to defend against.

  • Wow, the arrogance of it all. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Surye ( 580125 ) <surye80@NOsPaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @07:15PM (#11342501) Homepage
    In the early 1940's, Japan learned an important lesson - "let the sleeping giant lie." We may not react swiftly, but when we do it's with unstoppable force.

    Wow, this guy has some balls to be comparing a bit of video game hacking to pearl harbor.

  • That could hurt (Score:3, Funny)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @07:17PM (#11342534) Journal
    You thought K-line kicks were bad, see what a JDAM kick is like.

  • Seems to me that the only thing, if anything happens legally, will be a simple smack on the wrist, like a $50 fine or something. I doubt there will be arrests, kids getting thrown in jail and the like; it's much more likely to be a 'I wouldn't want that letter in my PO Box..' type thing. And for people outside the US, meh, we'll just keep on banning. There's also a few interesting ideas about a counter-attack script type thing floating around, but only has as much credibility as any other rumor, I suppose.
  • from Fallujah.

  • America's Army is not a game. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xplenumx ( 703804 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:46PM (#11344304)
    Considering that the military is using America's Army as a recruiting tool, a PR campaign [slashdot.org], and a psychological experiment [slashdot.org] it's in their very best interest to take a such a hard line against any and all hacks.
  • Get a sense of humor. He's joking. He doesn't actually have the power of the US Army usable behind him. If you ask him, "You and what army?", he'd most likely laugh. This is the same thing as a "Trespassers will be shot" sign. You sound like you're modding a Funny comment Troll - oh wait, this is the community that invented the Moderator's Lack of a Sense of Humor.

    Seriously. You guys sound like you think there are active soldiers who aren't overseas.

    On the other hand, he really shouldn't be saying what he

  • and yet their FAQ says... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Aropax20 ( 636154 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @06:14AM (#11346932)
    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 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @09:01AM (#11347884)
    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.
  • Those "urrefutable proof" and "we know where you live" sentences is pretty much crap. Everybody knows electronic data can be easily fabricated and cant be accepted in an actual trial (unless is certificated by several official sources like verisign and bank servers) so I pretty much doubt any game log or a game server log no matter how comprehensive will do as "urrefutable proof". And we "know where you live" please! have you heard of schools, offices and cyber cafes? even if these guys have used their own

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