TechWag

Major Nelson puts out some major guidance in why cheating is bad on the Xbox Live system. While cheating happens, it is generally unpleasant when someone is caught cheating, and many game makers are getting wise to the idea that few cheat, but they have a disproportionate influence on the entire game when someone is cheating.

While I am on the subject of things you should not do, I strongly urge you not to tamper with your Gamerscore and Achievements. If you decide to employ some nefarious techniques to artificially increase your Gamerscore or obtain achievements by manipulating the Xbox software without playing the game, bad things will happen. What type of bad things? For one thing we may remove the entire Gamerscore for an account that contains manipulated gamerscore. Let me be more clear: If you use tampered gamesaves to boost your Achievements and Gamerscore, you may sign in to Xbox LIVE one day and discover that we have removed your Gamerscore. Once we do that, you will never be able to re-earn those achievements on that account. Even worse, you might have your account and/or console banned from Xbox Live. Source: Major Nelson

While the idea of cheating is nothing new, most of the gaming companies will literally ban you permanently from their systems. While it looks good for a couple of minutes, and you can get a screen cap to brag about it. That is about really all the game cheater gets. Once they have their account trashed, there is nothing else that they can do other than move on and start all over again.

What is also interesting is the idea of account sharing, while you might have one account for the whole family, sharing your account outside of that could be problematic, especially now that the system allows for paid content downloads. Nothing worst than having all your gamer points squandered in a way you didn’t want to have them spent, and no Xbox will not issue you a refund, and yes, they will cancel your account.

Worst yet is if someone is soliciting minors because you shared your account information, not only do you get your account banned, but you get that 2AM knock on the door from the feds wanting to know what you were up to, and oh yeah, try to prove that it was not you.

As we get into the holiday season, and people have even more time to play video games, Major Nelson’s caution and commentary is well timed. Avoid temptation, play the game honestly, it is much more fun.

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