Gamerscore Hacking and Its Underground Economy 85
An anonymous reader writes "There's a writeup on SpywareGuide that explores the world of Xbox Gamerscore hacking, and how high Gamerscores are proving to be a big target for hackers and phishers. It also talks about how a recent release of a Gamerscore-altering program onto forums for hacking & cheating is proving to be lucrative business for both eBay sellers and those who want to artificially inflate a Gamerscore before selling that account, or trading it for credit card details."
Re:The buyers... (Score:1, Informative)
Clearly you have never played on xbox live, 10 minutes of a moronic 8 year out shouting "NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER" only ever interrupted by a cry demanding milk/cookies from their mother every now and then.
The majority of xbox live players are morons that only care about one upping their friends so they look cool, they just fail to realise that their actions merely have the complete opposite effect.
Re:*Sigh* (Score:4, Informative)
Yet another reason I cannot take people in general seriously
Re:The buyers... (Score:3, Informative)
You are mistaken. The achievements don't unlock anything except a big number beside your gamercard and a list of difficult things you've supposedly managed to do in various games. Unlocked bits of games that you're missing out on are stored in the save files instead.
Re:*Sigh* (Score:3, Informative)
The raw achievements number is indeed just a mark of how much time you've spent playing games. What I do look at, however, is the list of individual achievements on a game my friends have in comparison to me - being able to get some difficult achievement is a handy high-score proxy.
Which is one reason why gamerscore hacking is so utterly pointless - the idiots that do this just grant themselves 100% on the games, so it's pretty obvious what's up.
Re:Sadly, that's not true any more (Score:5, Informative)
I used to make the same argument, but it seems to me like that isn't true any more.
Ever since they got hard drives, console games routinely get installed to hard drive first. I.e., there goes that "just want to put the disk in and play." It's only true in the same way as for a PC game.
The biggest advantage for a console is you at least know games designed for the console will run fast as long as you own it. PC games tend to leave your rig in the dust sooner. But consoles are getting damned expensive these days.
The biggest advantage of the PC is that you can run a more bleeding edge than the console so long as you're willing to pay for it. PC games also have a bigger modding scene. Oblivion, for example, is seen as almost unplayable in the vanilla version and many fans consider the tweaked version to be sublime. And the PC gamer can run it at a higher resolution with more doodads enabled.
Re:The real point of Gamerscore (Score:4, Informative)
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the otaku level achievements, such as Cross Edge's "The Hikikomori: Spend far too much time unlocking dozens of titles." Just to let you know, there's at least 140 titles available, each title has requirements such like obtaining items X, Y, and Z, holding some quantity of item X in your inventory, doing over 10,000 damage, or having a combo over 400. Basically you have to 100% a RPG and then some in order to get this trophy.