On assholes and how to deal with them.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/12/microsoft-difference-between-cheat-exploit-none-banned.ars

I’m sure by now everyone knows that Modern Warfare 2’s online is plagued by some serious glitches, the most famous of which is the Javelin glitch, causing a player to instantly explode violently when killed, usually destroying his attacker and possibly anyone else in the area.

Both Infinity Ward and Microsoft have responded to the prevalence of this problem. IW has mentioned they’re working on a patch for the problem, and Microsoft has announced that they will start banning users from the service temporarily on a case-by-case basis until the fix is applied.

Am I the only one who is rubbed the wrong way by this?

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat. The actions of the glitchers and cheaters can not be justified. Period. End of story. Should they be punished? Of course. They are ruining the game for other players. They are unbalancing the game and effectively ruining it, yes.

However, is it the correct course of action to prevent them from playing entirely? I’m not so sure.

In effect, the message being sent by Microsoft for this ban is that the onus for the problem lies entirely on the player. I’m not comfortable with that. Infinity Ward is also to blame for this problem. Their QA simply did not catch the problem in development. Understandable, as shit happens. But because they messed up, it’s now entirely the players fault because of it? I don’t buy it.

While the EULA of Live states that it can hand out punishments for people it thinks are cheating or exploiting things, I’m curious why this hasn’t really happened before.

Long Jumps in Gears were mostly harmless, but still exploits. Reload glitching and fast firing controllers in COD4 were exploits and certainly anything BUT harmless. Both were ignored. Hell, even the recent L4D2 has a weird issue regarding spawning in multiplayer. In one of those COD4 cases, controllers had to be physically modified in order to achieve the desired effect. Were they removed from the service for doing so? Was any official message posted that said “CEASE AND DESIST OR WE WILL PROCEED TO MESS YOU UP?”. Of course not.

What sort of precedent does this set? That “you are being a jerkoff, you are not allowed to play any games you own now for 24 hours”. Where does this lead? Where is the line drawn? When do people start complaining that gameplay balance issues count as exploits, and therefore using the 1887s becomes too problematic, and therefore official action must be taken?

Hell, how about when the community decides that something is in fact a “part of the game”. Ars brought up Rocket Jumping. We could use Street Fighter II’s cancelling as another example. Or Smash’s wave dashing. While clearly the Javilindom horseshit is not in the same realm of legitimacy,  I’m worried more about what the implications of this sort of action is down the road. How do you define the line at what’s acceptable and what’s “not how the game was meant to be played?”. Isn’t that up to the community itself?

So how DO you deal with these guys? I’m not sure there is an answer. Any way you cut it, it’s lose-lose. Without the ability to police your own games, how does the community cope with problems outside of wait-for-a-fix method? Is a punishment that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense the correct way of dealing with it?