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‘Apex Legends’ bans 770,000 cheats
Just over a week ago Respawn announced that it's taking a stronger stance against cheating in Apex Legends. Today, it revealed that it's blocked 770,000 players, 300,000 account creations and 4,000 cheat seller accounts. The company says this is just the beginning of its battle to takedown cheats.
Algeria shuts down internet during exams to curb cheating
Algeria is not kidding around when it comes to exam cheats this year. The country is shutting off internet access for both mobile and fixed line connections for an hour after each high school diploma exam starts. Officials hope the move will stop any leaks. The temporary shutdowns will last until the end of the exam season on June 25th, the BBC reported. Algeria is also blocking Facebook across the nation during the period.
Blizzard sues an 'Overwatch' cheat developer
Blizzard has about as much interest in stamping out cheaters as you do, and it's willing to go to court to keep things clean. The company has filed a US lawsuit against Bossland, a German developer whose Watchover Tyrant app is designed solely to help unscrupulous Overwatch players. The software allegedly violates copyright law, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention measures. More importantly, Blizzard claims that Watchover hurts both legitimate players and the bottom line. The developer may be losing "tens of millions of dollars" in sales to gamers put off by the thought that cheaters are running rampant.
Drone catches cheating students in 'world's toughest exam'
If students want to cheat their way through one of China's most difficult exams, they'll now need to thwart a patrolling drone. The National Higher Education Entrance Exam, known as "gaokao," is held each year and determines whether youngsters will get into the top universities. It's been described as the "world's toughest exam" and can be stressful, even traumatic for students trying to achieve higher grades. Some entrants, ingeniously, try to cheat by capturing their test questions and sending them to someone on the outside, before receiving the answers via an earpiece. Unsurprisingly, China wants to crack down on the practise, so one province is now using a drone to monitor radio activity. When a disturbance is detected, it can alert the invigilators and help determine the culprit's location. The penalties for cheating are fierce, so authorities are hoping the threat alone will be enough to encourage would-be cheaters to spend their free time cramming instead.
Walk through walls, get infinite ammo in The Evil Within on PC
Bethesda doesn't support players using debug console commands to cheat their way through The Evil Within, but the publisher sure is making it easy to do so. In a post on the Evil Within forums, Bethesda outlines how to access the game's debug console via Steam and enable cheats such as god mode, infinite ammo, walking through walls, and a handy FPS lock. Perhaps these cheats will make The Evil Within more fun, or at least not as supremely disappointing. Curious gore lovers, see Bethesda's instructions below.
WildStar bans thousands of botters
Carbine Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney informed the WildStar community last night that the team is waging a serious fight against botters, having suspended 7,300 accounts in the last few days. "Obviously 7,300 is a tiny fraction of the overall player base, but it's a noticeable chunk of the current bots," Gaffney wrote. He pointed out that over half of those accounts were regular players who had their accounts hijacked and urged players to use two-factor authentication as a preventative measure. To aid in the war against bots, the team will be improving the reporting process and tuning its automated bot detection. Gaffney said that the studio will be unrelenting in its prosecution of such accounts: "We're attacking this with a full-spectrum approach as a placeholder until we get to the better tools that should help in the short-medium term. We acknowledge it sucks when you see obvious cheaters, and we're working to eliminate it."
Wizardry Online hit by duping and hacking, bans issued
Some things never presage good news. Case in point: Wizardry Online has been hit with what appears to be a round of hacking and item duping, leading to hyperinflation and a great deal of player outrage on the forums. Exact figures about how much gold was dumped into the economy are hard to come by, but most players seem to agree that it's a matter of several million gold sometimes foisted on unwitting victims. After claiming that the matter was being investigated, Sony Online Entertainment representatives locked some of the threads related to the topic while simply stating that suspensions had been issued and further discussion did not help the community. No statements have yet been issued regarding permanent bans or any potential rollbacks to the environment. What long-term effects this will have on the game's viability remain unclear, although several players are protesting SOE's apparent lack of action quite vigorously.
The Daily Grind: Is an exploit an exploit if a developer approves?
Over in the world of Lord of the Rings Online, some players are riled up over what they see as a clear exploit in PvP. The controversial situation arose when players rolled the free Reaver monster class for the sole purpose of being killed by other players, and thereby rapidly advancing those players in rank. Some players called it a clear exploit. Others said it violated the game's code of conduct. Yet Turbine stated that it is not a violation of rules and therefore is OK to continue. It's an interesting situation that raises the question: Is an exploit really an exploit if a developer gives it the official studio approval? Do players have a leg to stand on by calling something an exploit if it's been evaluated and endorsed by the studio? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Max Payne 3 cheaters get thrown into the miscreant quarantine
Rockstar's approach to cheaters in Max Payne 3 isn't "get rid of them" so much as it is "humiliate, punish and get rid of them, those lousy scoundrels." Any player confirmed to be using hacked saves, modded games, leaderboard circumvention tactics or other exploits in Max Payne 3's multiplayer will be ceremoniously quarantined in the "Cheaters Pool," which is kind of like jail, but all of the inmates have guns.The cheaters will only be able to play with other ne'er-do-wells in the pool, but they can be redeemed and re-enter the civilized multiplayer shooter world. However, if they step out of line again, they'll be serving life in the Cheaters Pool.
The Firing Line: Gravity-defying gameplay edition
Hullo shooter fans, and welcome back to Massively's weekly dose of pew pew news and views. The past seven days were quiet ones for three of the The Firing Line's "big four" MMO shooters, as newsmakers on the PlanetSide 2, Global Agenda, and Firefall dev teams were all silent. Thankfully there were a couple of cool DUST 514 tidbits to chew on, but before we get to those, I'd like to call your attention to some interesting Tribes: Ascend, APB: Reloaded, and CrimeCraft news that you may have missed.
Skyrim console commands give the unlimited power you crave
Players who have already dipped into the seemingly infinite world of Skyrim already know the power of words. For instance, a clearly-spoken "Fus" has the ability to send the contents of a meticulously set dinner table into an adjacent room. Despite the strength of your shouts, there's another language that carries even more otherworldly potency: Console commands. PC Gamer has corralled all the console commands for the PC (duh) version of Skyrim; a codex which includes spells like "sexchange" (which changes your character's gender) and "killall" (which kills all things). Give them a look, provided you're playing the appropriate version of Bethesda's epic RPG, and are also a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater.
Super Mario Bros. tricks explained with animated GIFs
With the launch of the 25th Anniversary edition of Super Mario All-Stars for Wii drawing near (this Sunday!), you may be seriously tempted to buy all those classic Mario games again for, like -- what? The fourth time? Think again! Not only is the "Limited Edition" Wii game a veritable ROM dump of the SNES All-Stars (which features graphically and musically enhanced versions of the NES games, by 16-bit standards), it's also missing a lot of the great "glitches" from the original games. TASVideos has assembled a comprehensive guide to the elite tricks and tactics from the original Super Mario Bros. games -- with pictures! Animated pictures. It serves as a stark reminder to us purists why there's really no substitute for the originals, even when said substitute comes in a nifty box.
Valkyria Chronicles 2 codes collected
Over the past few weeks, Sega has been updating its blog with new codes for Valkyria Chronicles 2. These codes can be entered under the "Extras" section on the title screen, and unlock a variety of stickers and characters.
TUAW's Daily App: Pokerbot
We posted about another poker app back at WWDC, and the developer of Pokerbot got in touch with us to show off his app as well. Pokerbot is a little bit different than your standard hold'em poker game. It's a straight up one-on-one battle, so the game is really built for learning how to play poker well; it doesn't drag out games or rely on graphical flair. The game started out as a poker training program, and the developer of the game's AI is a real poker player who has played more than a few good hands. That said, this probably isn't the app you want to get if you just want to enjoy playing at a full table; Pokerbot is meant for poker buffs or people who want to try to get to that level. There are little game touches that might turn hardcore players off (you can cheat with a feature called "Onetime" if you want, and there's a full achievements system thanks to OpenFeint). Most of the non-traditional touches are included in order to enhance the feel of the game, though; they aren't meant to make the poker action more casual. Pokerbot is US $1.99. If you've never played poker before, it's probably a little bit much for you, and you're better off going with something like Apple's official game. However, if you know your antes, straights, and flushes, and you want a game that will present a nice challenge while teaching you to play better, Pokerbot will help.
Red Dead Redemption to get Rockstar Social Club exclusive challenges and more
Rockstar Games has unveiled how it will be using the Rockstar Social Club service for Red Dead Redemption, and cowboys (and girls) looking for a little extra horsin' around won't be disappointed. The Social Club is offering achievements and challenges on top of the game, so, for example, one early mission that has you horsedragging an outlaw around will have a target time, and Social Club members who beat that time will get access to a special "Guns Blazing" cheat that gives your shots the chance to light enemies on fire. There will also be game-wide challenges, including one later this month that will require everyone playing the game to hit a certain amount of money raised, with an Xbox Live or PlayStation Home avatar T-shirt as a prize. There will also be community news, multiplayer events, special leaderboards and lots of stats tracked on the Social Club website. 100% completion is even "exclusively" in the Social Club, so presumably the only way you'll be able to know that you've done everything the West has to offer is to log on with a Rockstar Games account and find out. Kind of peculiar that information isn't in the game itself, no? At least signing up for the Social Club is free, so if you're planning to ride the plains next week, might as well do it now.
App Store filling up with spammers and clones of popular apps
Marco Arment has noticed a growing problem on the App Store; as hits emerge from among the free and paid apps, some companies are doing a little search scamming. They're ripping off the names, styles, and sometimes even the art of popular iPhone apps. He went to get the popular Angry Birds game and found that there are companies actually selling apps with "Cheats" and "Trivia" added on to the titles, often reusing the artwork from the original game. Certainly, some of these fall into a legal gray area (Angry Bird is technically another game, even though it's obviously hopping on the back of the more popular title), but some of them are straight up scams, and the angry reviews and terrible ratings prove that's the case. Arment calls out a few companies (whose titles are still on the App Store, as of this writing). He says that developers who feel an app is infringing on their trademarks can send a message to appstorenotices@apple.com to let Apple know about the problem. We'd love to see Apple clean house on these, but of course, we're not yet sure of their position. They may have some guidelines that define how close an app can get before it's actually infringing, but some of these are clearly over the line. We'll have to wait and see what actions Apple decides to take.
Video: How to cheat with your Pokewalker
Look, we know the headline kinda endorses cheating and we often err on the less evil side of things, but desperation has left us little choice. It's just that some of us are so damn sick of hearing about how great Griffin's Blissey is. Yeah, we get it, dude -- can't we just eat our peanut butter sandwich in the break room in peace? We don't care about how much damage your Hitmonlee does. That's why the tutorial video on how to cheat using the Pokewalker past the break is such valuable intel for us. So, we've resorted to doing the unthinkable: we're going to play Pokemon. We're going to play and we're going to level up our pokemans so high, it's going to fog up that jerk's glasses and take the breath right out of his lungs. Soon, he will know true pain as he's squashed beneath the scales of our Magikarp. Embarrassment, thy name will soon be Griffin McElroy! [Via Destructoid]
Don Flamenco punching loop intact in Punch-Out!! for Wii
Some of the more experienced Punch-Out!! players probably know of the trick to defeating Spain's resident matador, Don Flamenco, in the original game. However, in the years between that title and his appearance in the new game, it would seem he has learned nothing. With some carefully timed punches, Little Mac can turn Flamenco into the best two-stepper this side of the MIssissipp'. Head past the break to watch the trick in action.[Via Go Nintendo]%Gallery-33381%
Unlock every Street Fighter IV character the easy way
If you want to unlock every character in Street Fighter IV without actually earning them, then you'll want to check out this little video put together by MyCheats Senior Editor Mike Nelson. He shows off just how easy it is to cheaply defeat the computer, without having to put in much effort. In fact, you could probably do this without even being in the room. Head past the break to see what we mean.
Mario Kart cheat allows unlimited blue shells
Apparently, we're late to the party on this one, as folks have been steaming mad over a hack that allows players to toss an infinite number of blue shells during online races. While the video above does not show you the code, it does show you the damage that can be done. We've got a solution, however. Play Mario Kart Wii with us at Game Night!Having run Game Night for almost two years now, we can safely say nobody there cheats. We all enjoy multiplayer games together, the way they were meant to be played. So check it out!%Gallery-4772%[Thanks, Rengifo!] A fan of Mario Kart Wii? Us too, especially the tournaments, which there have been quite a few of. To check out the previous tournaments, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. And if you fancy yourself a good karter, check out Game Night for some of the community's best competition.
