Astonished at Xbox Live

[hallsofvallhalla]

I am totally blown away once again by Xbox live and once again in the negative way. I went to play COD4 and 5 and OMG there were cheaters everywhere, and when I say cheaters I mean people flying all over the place, using God mode, having crazy moving names and spamming web sites on the screen!

Looking at the forums at Xbox live this has been reported and xbox is not doing a thing about it. Do they not realize the next step is having all of our accounts hacked?

I am cancelling my xbox live account immediately.

[Jackolantern]

That reminds me of Borderlands. Everyone was running around with modded gear and weapons that made them take 0% damage and to one-hit kill everything. It completely ruined all online modes.

[Xaleph]

Well, in all honesty, it`s more a CoD problem then an xbox live problem. It`s like finding a website where you can learn how to hack servers. Who`s to blame? The guy who made the site or the hosting provider he`s with?

[hallsofvallhalla]

The hosting provider who is allowing the site is as much to blame as the one with the site. Even current law states that, if you harbor a fugitive you go to jail as well. If altering game code is against the terms then allowing it to happen on your servers is as wrong.

If you owned a parking lot where you sold parking spaces for $10 would you not be responsible for not running off people that broke into the cars?

[Jackolantern]

The thing is, though, that most game do not have dedicated servers. I don't know about CoD, but in Borderlands, all online games are hosted by a player. At that point, all controls Microsoft and the game publisher have are gone. Someone has their XBox in pieces and wired into their PC can alter the game code any way they want by bit sniffing and altering. Of course, most hacks like these do not spread. The issue that happened with Borderlands was that player's items and characters were saved directly to the hard drive and reuploaded to other player's servers without any authentication. So once a set of modded gear was in one person's game, it could easily be dupped and distributed, which is exactly what happened. That was the game developer and publisher's fault, because that is basic stuff.

It sounds like maybe CoD's online modes are supported through player-hosted servers as well. That is really the only way I could imagine cheating could be so rampant. Publisher-hosted servers are extremely expensive to maintain, and I understand the reasoning for leaning towards player-hosting, but it can have a severe cost on the game community.

As far as Xbox Live, really what you are paying for is for a cohesive UI and identity between games, and the services provided to support that. You are almost never playing on Xbox Live-run servers.

[hallsofvallhalla]

where they are hosted is not my issue. Allowing people to cheat and mod the games is a serious security issue. Ban the xbox's/people from live. Issue resolved.

[Nexus]

The problem is you can get them from various sites and keep making new accounts. Essentially I cannot see a way the problem could ever be solved. The only Call of Duty Game where I don't see ANY cheaters at all is Black Ops. They don't even have any prestige hacks because Treyarch beefed up the security on it.

[hallsofvallhalla]

when they ban you they ban your xbox, no way yet to defeat that..don't see anyone paying $100+ per ban

[Nexus]

Really? I thought they just ban your accounts permanently. Is it just like an IP ban?

[Jackolantern]

where they are hosted is not my issue. Allowing people to cheat and mod the games is a serious security issue. Ban the xbox's/people from live. Issue resolved.

The issue is that if the games are hosted by players, they will never see the cheating happening, nor can they prove it happened. Player A hosts the game, and Player B, C, and D are playing on the server he has made. The company is not involved, and sadly, really neither is Xbox Live. Xbox Live only provides the connection to the gamers and helps to resolve who will host it. After that is done, Xbox Live isn't involved again until some kind of results need to be reported back to them, such as a rank-changing event or an achievement, and then, I believe it is reported as a web service or just a simple socket connection.

Really, the issue is not with Xbox Live, but with the developers. While there is not a ton they can do to prevent cheating on player-hosted servers, there are some things they can do, which is the reason why some player-hosted games do not have tons of cheating.

Honestly the only question I have in terms of Xbox Live is why is it a pay service? PSN offers close to the same services for free, XBL doesn't host many (if any) games on their own servers, etc.