Games - Banning in Halo

Like a Covenant Brute with a Gravity Hammer, Bungie reset the credits of 15,000 users who were caught earning credits through disingenuous means. Apparently there was a challenge being completed over and over again through "intentional network manipulation,"Â aka intentional Xbox Live disconnects. This allowed gamers to receive the credits awarded for this specific challenge 20+ times. The gamers caught having taken advantage of this exploit have found their credits reset.

Bungie has been taking their online community seriously since day 1 and it's nice to see them continue doing so, but is it entirely fair to punish gamers for taking advantage of an exploit in their software? A lot of innocent gamers have claimed that they have been unfairly punished by having their hard earned credits removed, but Bungie responded by saying "Spot checks have revealed the telltale signature of this behavior on every denier so far, so don't be fooled by the protests of innocence. We aren't." With all of the statistics that Reach does keep track of, it's easy to believe Bungie when they say this.

Ferrex, the Bungie moderator from the Halo: Reach boards that made this announcement warns, "A more comprehensive pass will be occurring in the coming week as our automated Banhammer mechanisms grow accurate enough to satisfy our high bar for burden of proof. If you are thinking about getting an easy 50k credits by using this exploit, I would strongly advise you to reconsider."Â So whether or not you think it's fair, you may not want to look up the exploit.

Original Announcement: http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=49997802

Written by: Evil Ambassador Carlos Reyes