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First Person Shooters (Games) Games

Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters 203

Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.
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Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters

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  • VAC (Score:3, Insightful)

    by roguetrick ( 1147853 ) <kazer@brIIIigands.org minus threevowels> on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @06:56AM (#30281676) Homepage Journal

    They decided to use VAC instead of Punkbuster on the PC. Like many of their decisions, this one wasn't well thought out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by roguetrick ( 1147853 )

      Also, this says alot about the uproar over no dedicated servers:
      http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2009/11/gam_boycottfail_580-1258143415.jpg [blogcdn.com]

      • by dyefade ( 735994 )

        That shot showed 833 members.
        The game has sold how many copies so far?

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          WHOOSH! You missed the point. Those are members of a group calling for a boycott. Most of them are playing MW2 (indicated by the status under their avatar).
          • by sopssa ( 1498795 ) *

            Now I ruin the joke for everyone, but Steam shows all of the playing users in start of the list and non-playing/away/offline members in the end. So the actual amount of users playing is a lot smaller percentage.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by FictionPimp ( 712802 )

          Plus most of them bought the game anyways I'm sure.

          I've just come to the conclusion I'm the only person on the planet who stuck to my guns and didn't buy this game.

          • Re:VAC (Score:5, Insightful)

            by PingSpike ( 947548 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @09:01AM (#30282560)

            From most of the comments I've read about this game and the uproar about it, most people now consider "Pirating with Righteousness" the no-lose alternative to boycotting. It is understandable. I mean, how can we expect some one to live without something so vital to their very survival? It would be like boycotting food! I'm pretty sure there aren't even any other FPS games out there available so what are they going to do?

          • by kextyn ( 961845 )
            I was sticking to my personal boycott of the game which was hard because I knew it was a great console game (PC and XBox 360 gamer here). My brother bought the 360 version for me as a birthday present so of course I have to play online with him now. On PC I'll just stick with CoD4.
          • by Jaysyn ( 203771 )

            Nope not alone. But I wouldn't have bought it if it did come with a dedicated server, I really just don't like reality-based war games. Not my cup of tea.

          • by Thrymm ( 662097 )

            I also didn't bother to buy it because of non dedicated servers. My view won't change either, there are other games to play, even though I really did want to play it.

            • by sopssa ( 1498795 ) *

              Last night I actually saw a dream where the "party" menu showed "join dedicated server" button too. It must be coming!

          • It may have been just you and me. All of my friends who were all wound up about it and moaned about all the problems they had with it bought it for full retail on launch day and play it nightly. I never really liked the MW franchise so I never planned to buy it anyway. I just stick to TF2 and like it that way.

          • nope,you're not alone, I didn't buy into it either. My roommate has bought it for xbox 360, but I really hate FPS on the 360 so I will stand strong beside you and forever boycott this game. . .

            --just like I've done with Steam in general

            o_0

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) *

          I don't know what the press release says, but I see from the "Top Sellers" chart on the Steam portal that MW2 has already dropped to number 3 behind a bargain basement Mirror's Edge and a bundle of older THQ games w/ Red Faction Guerrilla.

          Something tells me MW2 is not meeting Infinity Ward's expectations despite all the whistling past the graveyard. I'm sure it'll be a money maker, but god-willing, it will be a disappointment for them considering their willingness to crap in the face of the loyal customers

          • I don't know what the press release says, but I see from the "Top Sellers" chart on the Steam portal that MW2 has already dropped to number 3 behind a bargain basement Mirror's Edge and a bundle of older THQ games w/ Red Faction Guerrilla

            Um, to be fair, those offers are absolutely steals (Mirror's Edge for €3? THQ's entire catalogue for the price of a single game?) so it's no wonder they're momentarily outselling a new game - don't forget that MW2's price on Steam is probably double what you pay in the stores.

            P.

        • The point isn't the 833 members, it is that almost all of the 833 members of the "boycott" group were playing the game. It is pretty easy to assume based on that image that even if 2 million people boycotted, almost all of them would still buy the game.
      • That would make a nice sample image for the "Gallery of Wrong" in this article [encycloped...matica.com].

      • Assuming for a moment that this sample size of 21 people, 11 of which are playing MW2, is an accurate representation of the total population (it probably isn't) there's still a few problems. Just like in the Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott group I'm sure there were people who supported the game and were not boycotting it but were a part of the group*. That's sort of like presenting the chance for a male to get cancer and including the results from women in the calculations. Even if this isn't the case there's still a
        • There is no inherent claim that this is a representative sample. The picture is an example of a self selected group of the population who announced their desires to boycott the game. Then those people did not boycott the game, indicating a ton of noise but no substance. Your analogy would be applicable if you included people who never announced their intentions to boycott the game, but these guys certainly did. Its not as if joining steam groups is compulsory or done without the individuals consent.

    • Re:VAC (Score:4, Informative)

      by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:02AM (#30281722) Journal

      PunkBuster is just as vulnerable to being bypassed and disabled as VAC is, so saying they should have used PunkBuster is a cop out.

      • Re:VAC (Score:4, Informative)

        by roguetrick ( 1147853 ) <kazer@brIIIigands.org minus threevowels> on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:04AM (#30281734) Homepage Journal

        I don't know the specifics of it, but I was under the impression that the guys running punkbuster had more experience with the underlying platform.

      • PunkBuster is just as vulnerable to being bypassed and disabled as VAC is, so saying they should have used PunkBuster is a cop out.

        You're right. They should have used Cop Out instead. Every other company uses it, and it has predictable and consistent results

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )

        I wonder if something like this would work.

        Add someone to a personal ignore list. The match making would have a negative weight for people in your ignore list and try to put you in a game with fewer of those people. If someone tries to join a game and 50% or more of those people have that person in their ignore lists, the match making won't put them in that game.

        Make this list server side and reset after 2 months. Enough time for VAC to kick in. If someone gets voted a second time after the reset by the sa

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Narpak ( 961733 )

      They decided to use VAC instead of Punkbuster on the PC. Like many of their decisions, this one wasn't well thought out.

      I personally feel that the only system I have seen so far with a reasonable rate of success is dedicated servers with some sort of permaban of accounts caught cheating. While by no means a perfect system; my personal experience (with TF2 as that is the only FPS game besides MW2 I have played over the last few years) was that I found a gaming site that ran servers for a variety of games. An extended group of people frequented those servers, creating a community of sorts, and I personally never had much probl

    • I don't let anything running Punkbuster anywhere near my system

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 )
        +1. The rootkit approach to anti-cheating is stupid. The anti-cheating app should be a regular service the user has full control over. There is no need for a rootkit - if the anti-cheating service crashes or throws an error, the game closes, it's that simple. Any other problems are due to poor game design and lack of decent cryptography. An online-playable game has to be secure, if people can mod the game files or interact with the game in any unauthorized way, that's a security flaw. A little server-side c
    • They decided to use VAC instead of Punkbuster on the PC. Like many of their decisions, this one wasn't well thought out.

      Actually I think it was a brilliant idea.

      Ever submitted a support request to evenbalance? (the makers of PB) I have and they are terrible, they reply 3 or 4 days later saying they will not help you or saying some stock answer that doesn't really answer your question. Steam's support department on the other hand are actually helpful.

      The problem seems to stem from the fact that if I as a customer submit a problem to PB, and PB tell me to take a running jump there us nothing I can do about it. I am not able to

    • What are the technical advantages of using Punkbuster? I've never (knowingly) played a game that used it, although I have played VAC secured games and have no complaints.

  • Um, no (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:00AM (#30281700) Journal

    Specifically, Steam's VAC anti-cheat system is in place for abusers of the PC version, and this news is either proof that the setup is proving more efficient for catching cheaters, or proof that even with this arrangement Infinity Ward still can't get rid of the cheating problem.

    Um, no. VAC2 is easily bypassed or disabled by most competent hack writers. They like to pretend that VAC is the holy grail of anti-cheats but it's just as vulnerable as PunkBuster or any of the league anti-cheats.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Even if VAC detects the cheater, the way it deals with it allows hackers to go on. VAC detects, logs, and then bans the player two months later. The cheater causes two more months of grief to the player base. The only reason it waits two months is to make it difficult for the cheater to figure out which hack caused the ban.
    • by Xest ( 935314 )

      That's because the PC is an open platform and just as DRM can't work, anti-cheating software like this can't work. The client is untrusted, anything on it can be worked around.

      • I considered this, but anti-cheating software doesn't really have the same design flaw as DRM. With DRM you're trying to prevent the user from viewing the content under certain conditions but allowing them to view it under others - it doesn't work, especially since the key to decrypt the content is going to be on the users' machine somewhere. Anti-cheating can allow the user to look at the content all they want, you're preventing the user from altering it or faking certain inputs and outputs, which is entir
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Xest ( 935314 )

          "With DRM you're trying to prevent the user from viewing the content under certain conditions but allowing them to view it under others"

          This is really what you're doing in the anti-cheating scenario, just on a more abstract level. You still have to pass raw data to the graphics API or graphics card eventually as raw data. You cannot both render it with standard hardware and keep it in an encrypted format. Realistically though it's in a plain format before this because performing client side logic on encrypt

  • by Tei ( 520358 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:10AM (#30281760) Journal

    the destructoid article shows the use of a patch that enable the console, to change game defaults configs to something insane (insane fun? the video looks like fun). It can be a step to dedicated server, but is NOT a dedicated server. Is still a machine hosted by a player logued and playing the game, it needs a GPU, etc, etc..

    NOT DEDICATED.

  • Oh, AGAIN? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:20AM (#30281822) Homepage

    For those not in the know, this is how the conversation goes.

    • Developer: We need to design-in anti-cheat methods from the get-go, or honest players will get raped.
    • Producer: And that'll delay my demo, right? Where's my demo? Show me a demo. Demo-demo-demo.
    • Developer: But it'll save us time in the long run, and we won't have to play whack-a-hacker catch up after release, with all the costs and bad press...
    • Producer: Yeah... but I'm only producing it up to release. And are you going to be relegated to the support crew, or am I going to take you with me to my next exciting project?
    • Developer: Uh... I'll get on with the demo.

    That's the best case scenario. A depressing number of devs don't even consider trying to design-out hacks, and think that whack-a-hack is a winning long term strategy, despite the decades of evidence that say it ain't so. I'm looking at you Blizzard.

    • Re:Oh, AGAIN? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:43AM (#30281948) Journal
      Given Blizzard's sales numbers, I'd say that they have a solid decade's worth of evidence that what they are doing is a thoroughly winning strategy...
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Narpak ( 961733 )
        I would, with little evidence to support my claim, say that cheating in level 80 PvP isn't really a big issue in WoW; at least not that I saw when I played it last. If you get caught cheating in WoW you risk getting an account ban; which means losing a lot of hours, sweat and blood; invested in the game. Of course gold farmers will still try to hack and cheat as much as they can, but at least they don't run around doing it in PvP.
      • Mmm, fair enough, it's true that Blizzard are succeeding despite their best efforts to design in problems.

        They could be winning more though, if they didn't have to spend support money on playing whack-a-hack, and cut off players (and their revenue streams).

        Bear in mind that whack-a-hack is forever. You can only stop doing it when your game becomes so unpopular that nobody is hacking it any more.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xest ( 935314 )

      It's because, on the PC, you can't, without shifting everything server side.

      Even then by the time we have the resources to shift everything server side we'll probably also have the resources client side on the PC to do in game pattern matching and have cheats that just match images sent to the client and respond to automatically aim at them or similar.

      The idea of cheat free gaming on the PC is a fantasy, it can't happen, it's not a suitable platform for such endeavours.

      Similarly though, I'd never want to se

      • You realise that you're enumerating design decisions there, not immutable laws?

        If you decide to give up control of the servers and design your game in a way that allows clients to win just by sending the right "I did X" packet, then it's game over as far as anti-cheating is concerned. But there's nothing forcing you to make those decisions.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Xest ( 935314 )

          No, it's not that simple.

          Even if you don't give up control of the server you cannot protect against many different cheats. Player locations have to be sent even when they're behind a wall or whatever because otherwise they pop awkwardly into view. Models/art assets can still be hacked on the client to be more visible and similar regardless- even if they're not stored locally and sent every game session they can be modified in memory by a determined cheater.

          Aimbots are always going to be possible because you

          • by Tainek ( 912325 )

            Which further goes to prove, The only good anti-cheat protection is a human admin.

            Which is why I have actually stuck to my boycott of the game.

            • by Xest ( 935314 )

              Have a look at my post here:

              http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1462144&cid=30283336 [slashdot.org]

              It is possible to have human admins on the distributed system too.

              Oddly though, whilst I play on the Xbox and never saw the issue with the P2P system because that's how it works on the XBox and because you don't really tend to get cheating as such there anyway (at least not aimbots etc.) I have to say MW2s netcode is fucking awful. It's the first XBox game where I've seen multiple bad hosts picked such that lag is an iss

          • I agree with this. Cheaters ruin a lot of games, but complete eradication of them just isn't possible. It is harder on an open platform like the PC and still isn't possible on consoles. Couple this with less than perfect network connections which require some clever client guessing tricks to make the game appear smooth and playable and you're getting tugged in multiple directions.

            People rag on VAC a lot for its delayed bans, and while Valve deserves being ragged on for many things I can't fault them to much

          • I didn't say that it was simple. I said that it was a design choice. We do apparently agree on that, we just seem to come to different conclusions about what it means for PC games.
    • Because they didn't need one, they knew it would sell anyway. And they were right.

  • Barely a start (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ifrag ( 984323 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:43AM (#30281950)
    ONLY 2500 accounts? That's not even a drop in the bucket, the slightest slap on the wrist of the anti-competitive players in MW2. Based on personal experience of having an aim-bot user in roughly 1 out of every 3 matches I'd say 2500 isn't even a start. Maybe it's a lot worse in some game modes, especially the 16 player "big game" matches where it's more likely simply due to having more people in game (or more targets? I suppose the bots like having more victims). I don't even like having them on my team, even though it's usually a win because the bot ends up stealing almost all the kills, or they just settle for a 25 kill tactical nuke and end it. Maybe if they get up to 2500 accounts per day it'll make a difference.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Toridas ( 742267 )
      I'm rank 42, I play probably 90% domination and 10% team deathmatch (not ground war) and I haven't seen a single person I would call a cheater, unless you count a few people who hacked their rank.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by roachdabug ( 1198259 )

        I've seen the videos of aimbots and the ability to see players' positions through walls.

        As far as aimbots go, It's genuinely hard to tell if somebody is using one most of the time. Even my noob ass has pulled off some pretty unbelievable shots. If you're decent enough to get some of the better kill streaks, you can easily rack up a large amount of kills.

        As far as wall hacks go, I HAVE had several experiences where opposing players have been practically supernatural.

        In addition, I've had times where I'll pla

    • Re:Barely a start (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thisnamestoolong ( 1584383 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @08:31AM (#30282236)
      Oohhhh... I see... you're that guy -- you know, the one who always yells OMFG HAXXXX every time they get killed. Aim bots are notoriously difficult to spot as there are a lot of people out there who are just ridiculously good -- I have a feeling most of the "hackers" you have seen are just people who are way better than you and consistently snipe you in the face from across the map. Is this annoying? Sure. Is it something that they should be banned for? No.
      • Re:Barely a start (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mike_c999 ( 513531 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @08:49AM (#30282412)

        Got to say this is so to the point.

        Many time I've made some good clean kills followed by a lot of "OMFG nice wall hack/Aim bot/cheating...." and I'm not even that good.
        There are far more competent player out there make far more constant kills than me and its not cheating, Its just good reflexes and hard work.

        My comment is to just get over yourself and have fun.

        • Re:Barely a start (Score:5, Interesting)

          by flitty ( 981864 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @09:39AM (#30282954)
          This is why I like COD's Kill Cam. There were many times where I thought "No way that guy killed me in 2 bullets with a SMG", only to find that there was a sniper up in a tower across the map who was taking pot shots at me too. The feedback you get about how people take you out is invaluable, and one of the reasons why I play COD Multiplayer more than most multiplayer games.
          • I also really enjoy watching the kill cam. If there is one good thing about the way servers are handled in MW2 is that every game has kill cam on. In the latter days of MW1 it got hard to find a server with the kill cam on (one that had decent ping and played the game type I wanted to anyways).

          • I love the kill cam in COD4. As you said, it helps me learn What I Did Wrong: the spots to watch out for, the places people can get to, the need to be wary of pre-emptive grenades, the value of having sights up all the time, as well as the value of a well-timed sprint.

            I understand that many clan servers would turn OFF kill cam to prevent people from spouting intel to teammates over Ventrilo (or the like), and sometimes the mandatory kill cam is annoying in deathmatch, but I frequently get in a rut of "How

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by PPalmgren ( 1009823 )

          Being at the top of an FPS community causes a lot of accusations. I was banned from a large percentage of old NS servers because of accusations, but unlike my competitive counterparts I didn't even use a pistol script (which was allowed in competitive play). Ignorance is bliss. If they were honest, they'd simply say they don't want people of a certain skill level on their server.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by PingSpike ( 947548 )

          I'd say anyone who is even moderately good at a FPS, or even just had a few lucky days has had this happen. Let's not forget being banned for the grave offense of "Killing the admin." :P

          I remember once turning a corner in CS:S, while playing as CT and finding 4 Ts aiming my direction. My response to this situation, understandably, was to hold down fire button while backing out in the direction from which I came. While the first guy that died was a fairly legit aimed shot, the other 3 that fell to lucky head

        • by MarkvW ( 1037596 )

          I played DFLW before the cheaters overcame it. In DFLW the gamespace was huge. It was so much fun getting behind the snipers and sniping at them. They couldn't figure out how they were getting killed, so they would accuse me of all sorts of bad cheating things.

          Ahhh..... the fun memories.

        • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @12:29PM (#30285296) Journal

          Got to say this is so to the point.

          Many time I've made some good clean kills followed by a lot of "OMFG nice wall hack/Aim bot/cheating...." and I'm not even that good.
          There are far more competent player out there make far more constant kills than me and its not cheating, Its just good reflexes and hard work.

          It's even funnier in Left 4 Dead.

          For one thing, most Infected there produce a very distinct sound, and with a little bit of training, one can aim at sound alone and shoot through walls, hitting more often than not. With more experience you can hear that sound from quite far away.

          Then there are bugs in the game engine which result in shadows "bleeding through" walls or roof at some spots, and occasionally even chunk of the model - again, leading to wall shots.

          Finally, after playing for a long time, you learn the maps really well, and that includes all the typical ambush spots. At that point quite often you start shooting before turning around the corner, so that if a Boomer is there (probability 30%), he dies before he has any chance of barfing on you.

          In all of the above scenarios, if you're the one doing the shooting, you'll get "OMG! wallhax/aimbot!" whines more often than not, especially when the other team is relatively unexperienced (or is being pwnd). I've been vote-kicked off servers several times because of that.

      • Indeed. A lot of communities require proof before they'll ban a hacker, generally a demo. Shame communities can do neither of these things.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Unfortunately, "That guy" is at least one third of the gaming populace, with a large overlap with the "Rage quitters" group.

        I agree totally though. I semi-regularly get accused of hacking for some of the stuff I manage to pull off, and I don't even feel that it's really that special. But, it's the internet. And, no-one could POSSIBLY be better than THAT GUY at ... so if they beat him, they MUST be hacking, right?

      • by ifrag ( 984323 )

        It's pretty obvious when you watch it on the kill cam actually, the difference between human skill and what these programs can achieve has too large a gap. If the programs were made a bit more subtle then I will admit I would have a harder time telling the difference. Subtlety however, does not seem to have been the aim in designing these programs, so the distinction is clear, especially when you watch the replays.

        Also, to clear up your misunderstanding, I've never even bothered accusing any of these play

        • by BobMcD ( 601576 )

          This makes me wonder why they haven't implemented some sort of a statistical spam filter. "'X' headshots in a row puts you on the list" where 'X' is significantly higher than normal. It can't possibly be that hard when you are controlling all the code and the servers.

  • Is that I have to open a bunch of ports and do port forwarding to my ps3 just to play online... their support forums say to turn on pnp on the wireless router, which is absolute crap, they do not really list the ports being used other then a wide range.. and anyone thats using linux/openbsd/similar firewalls and routers, have to play trial and error on which ports to open without removing all rules and forwarding all ports to the ps3....

    I frequently get punted during host migration in the middle of a game..

    • That happens frequently even with open NATing. They seem to have some problems with their networking and matchmaking. It used to happen occasionally in MW1, but it seems to very frequent now.
  • Not this time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @08:27AM (#30282196) Journal

    Maybe the sales figures in the press releases are true, but there's no way to know how big the sales could have been if there had not been such bad word of mouth before release.

    I know this much: The sales charts on the Steam home page showed that unlike Borderlands and Dragon Age: Origins, the pre-sale of MW2 didn't even make the top ten until just before release, where as the pre-sale of the other two went right to the top very early on.

    The only way to deal with a company that ignores consumer wishes is to not give them money. Personally, I decided to spend my time and money with Borderlands and DA:O instead.

    We'll see if the sales figures continue to grow now that the scene "demo" of MW2 has been released. I bet that one will allow for dedicated servers.

    • Maybe the sales figures in the press releases are true, but there's no way to know how big the sales could have been if there had not been such bad word of mouth before release.

      IMHO, the true impact of this decision will be seen when they release the next game in the series. I purchased the game, not knowing about the lack of dedicated servers support. It won't happen again (it's unplayable online for me at 160 ms minimum ping).

      The only problem is that probably they won't realize why people won't be

  • Stats (Score:2, Interesting)

    by s1lverl0rd ( 1382241 )

    Are there any correlation statistics between pirates and cheaters? Are pirates more likely to cheat?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by roachdabug ( 1198259 )

      I don't believe pirates are likely to even be playing multiplayer in the first place. Everything is tied into Steam this time around, even for those who bought the box off the shelf.

      • I don't believe pirates are likely to even be playing multiplayer in the first place. Everything is tied into Steam this time around, even for those who bought the box off the shelf.

        actually before the patches it was playable even with pirated copies of the game, now you get kicked after a few minutes of playing, but you can still use the older version even if it will take a lot of time to find out other people with the same version

  • by Anonymous Coward

    If you're not going to allow people to host their own servers, then you screw up Brazilians who don't get less than 250 ping. Ignoring a country with 150 million people and a project to bring internet connectivity to every home in a couple of years is a really good plan. Besides, we love being treated like a 3rd world country. Worry not, we'll remember this, when we laugh our ass off playing in a hacked server with a pirated copy of your game.

  • by Runefox ( 905204 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @09:22AM (#30282784)

    While it outsold MW1, MW2's PC port sold a paltry 3% of total MW2 sales - I believe that says quite a lot about it.

    Frankly, I'm fairly sure that's what they're going for - Cripple the experience on the platform that's easiest to pirate for, and encourage people to move to the locked-down platforms (360, PS3). At least, that's what it looks like to me. There's more money in the console versions, and the numbers pretty much scream as much. I can hear it now - "Why bother with the PC this time around? It only sold 3% last time and look at the piracy! Just focus on the 360/PS3". I wouldn't really even give a damn if not for the fact that controllers are absolutely worthless to me as far as first-person shooters go.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Unfortunately, the people making the decisions have probably never held a controller, let alone attempted to play an FPS with one.

      • I have an it sucks, the only thing I like about it is that it is stupid easy to kill people, thanks autoaim
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        On the contrary, I would assume most of the junior management played Halo 1 in their frat houses all the time. Probably plenty of middle managers played Halo 1 in their off time while working on their MBAs. It wouldn't surprise me if most of them played a good bit of Halo 2 as well. Which would explain a lot regarding the recent turn towards console-based FPSes.

    • by BobMcD ( 601576 )

      I wouldn't really even give a damn if not for the fact that controllers are absolutely worthless to me as far as first-person shooters go.

      Do those things still have USB ports on them? Bluetooth, perhaps?

    • Count me as one of the folks who was going to buy it on the release date. Without dedicated servers, I consider it mostly a single player game so I'll wait till the bargain bin.
    • Yeah, there's really no excuse for not having keyboard/mouse support in console games. Any of the modern consoles have USB ports AND wireless capabilities (unadulterated BT in some cases), and two of them have integrated web browsers! I can only assume that they feel the need to preserve the marketing BS that their unique, revolutionary, miraculous cancer-curing, baby-kissing, joy-giving controllers are so spectacular that there's no need for any alternative; a message that would be utterly obliterated if

  • The game is reusing a old engine, that probably already has lots exploits well know, and his weakness well know.
    But this time the attacker can run the server. So he can do anything to the server.

    So you start with something that is weak, vulnerable and his problems well know, and move to a setup that make it more vulnerable, and remove any ability from the community to self-protect from jerks.

  • MW2 (Score:3, Informative)

    by kalirion ( 728907 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @10:25AM (#30283580)

    Anyone else think "MechWarrior 2" whenever they see the acronym?

  • After years of playing FPS games online on PCs (since the original Quake if you count LAN play), I finally gave up on playing against hackers. They just ruin the game. Even though getting adjusted to the PS3 controller after years of mouse and keyboard input took about a couple of weeks, it has been worth it. The game play is smooth and the graphics are great.

    The only real downside is the match making. It seems that it is hosting the game on other people's hardware? Like other posters have mentioned, f

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