Infinity Ward bans MW2 PC cheaters

By Tom Bramwell Published 30 November, 2009

Dedicated severs.

Infinity Ward has started clamping down on naughty gamers who flout the rules in Modern Warfare 2 for PC.

"Top men are on it," creative strategist Robert Bowling tweeted when someone asked him about it on Friday night.

"In fact, the Steam ban hammer is coming down on about 2,500 confirmed #MW2 cheaters on PC today."

One of Infinity Ward's justifications for moving from a dedicated server model to its peer-to-peer IWNet alternative was the ability to clamp down on cheaters quickly.

It wasn't able to completely eliminate hacks, however, with evidence of unlimited ammo, XP boosts and other cheats appearing on YouTube within a week of the game's 10th November launch. Presumably this is the end of that, for now.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (36) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • GamerG #1 2 years ago

    cheaters and griefers

    thats why I hate PC gaming!

  • Paperghost #2 2 years ago

    "cheaters and griefers

    thats why I hate PC gaming!"

    Console gaming is pretty much the same, if its any consolation. Which it isn't...

  • asphaltcowboy #3 2 years ago

    We found someone using a geometry exploit in Afghan the other day on 360. He'd managed to get inside a rock and was shooting out from it at unsuspecting passersby. Got us a few times before I managed to sneak up to the rock and shoot into to. The guy built up his killstreak and nuked us unfortunately.

    Messaged him to let him know what I thought about cheats, to which he replied that he was only doing it to get a specific emblem that he wanted and that 9 of his 30+ kills were actually genuine! Told him that was a great excuse and it was still cheating, he said "k".

    Brilliant.

    Still, I left negative feedback and filed a complaint for cheating.
    Edited by 1 at 30/11/09 @ 08:46

  • JahB #4 2 years ago

    nice, ban these assholes. and i'm probably gonna get a lot of flak for it, but you know - they couldn't have done this with dedicated servers...

  • dsmx #5 2 years ago

    2500 cheaters who would of either been banned or not playing on most servers if dedicated servers existed on the PC version.

  • Xerx3s #6 2 years ago

    By "cheaters", do they mean the lot that hacked the games so they could run it outside IW's control? Anyway, this just goes to show again why dedicated servers are better, on a good dedicated they would have been isntabanned, now you have to wait for IW to get enough people on the list so that they can make it into a PR stunt.

  • cheeky_pete #7 2 years ago

    Yeah this will be the one that stops the hackers from the first few days with new hacks coming out all the time and ones that work outside of the game to project an overlay cant be detected by vac so hacking will remain and with no option to kick from the crappy listen servers it wont get better any time soon.

  • el_pollo_diablo #8 2 years ago

    @ AlanaW

    It may have ripped off every film under the sun but it's still a fun little game. Even better, you dont need any bizarrely out of place links to other websites such as the world carrot museum.

  • Paperghost #9 2 years ago

    AlanaW is a spambot, there's a lot of them doing the rounds with pre-filled comments referring to the most common aspects of MW2 discussion. No point replying to it, you won't get an answer. Convincing, though - at one point it had a +4 comment score...!
    Edited by 1 at 30/11/09 @ 10:31

  • LiveForever #10 2 years ago

    What about the x360 boosters?

  • Paperghost #11 2 years ago

    "What about the x360 boosters?"

    imho boosters aren't really an issue. the biggest problem for me with the 360 are these:

    1) people who use any number of gamerscore inflating programs with the intention of selling the tampered accounts on ebay (which also contributes to people wanting to phish accounts so they can start artificially inflating those gamerscores with the intention of selling them on too) and

    2) the ease with which you're able to tamper with almost every aspect of an xbox game. Not so long ago it was possible to temporarily change your gamertag for the duration of an ingame session. This allowed you to get around swear filters AND (obviously) pretend to be other people. What happened was that the account tamperers would look up lists of game dev gamertags (usually from lists of gamertag score websites) then jump into a game related to that dev, pretending to offer up "free stuff" in return for login details.

    It's been fixed now, but just one small example. That the xbox can be touted as somehow "safer" for gaming than a PC by console makers and the mainstream media in general is a bit of a joke. The xbox unfortunately is a piece of swiss cheese where leet hax come into play.

  • jambo74 #12 2 years ago

    @asphaltcowboy

    geometry exploit!
    No - just some bad programming.

  • SpaceMonkey77 #13 2 years ago

    Its clear the IW suit philosophy is a very aged music industry one, that by painting modders as pirates and such, and having no dedicated servers, they seek to control a system totally, in similar way to WoW's Battlennet.

    Overall, PC people are just as tech savvy if not more so, than those who create games. All Activision are doing is alienating them, and while MW2 is the hot shit, other games from other more accomodating devs will come out.

    Aliens vs Predator, IMO, will superseed MW2, because of such features.

  • gjgjg #14 2 years ago

    respect my awthoratay

  • hiddenranbir #15 2 years ago

    Ok, bets on when the ban will get circumvented?

  • sneetch #16 2 years ago

    @Xerx3s
    By "cheaters", do they mean the lot that hacked the games so they could run it outside IW's control?

    They can't ban those. :)

    Anyway, this just goes to show again why dedicated servers are better, on a good dedicated they would have been isntabanned, now you have to wait for IW to get enough people on the list so that they can make it into a PR stunt.

    Yeah, what I prefer about server admins handling the banning rather than this service is that people I've seen who were banned are banned by a server admin who was actually on the server. So the Server admin was an eye-witness to the cheating (literally, when wall hacking, the admin goes into first person spectator mode and watches their view). Here it's what, a bot harvesting data? Looking for tell tale signs of "cheating" and banning accordingly, fine when it works but mistakes may be made.

  • JensonJet #17 2 years ago

    Why are there more talentless PC gamers than anywhere else? I used to think the most skilled gamers were on the PC. It may still be true, but it also houses the least skilled too I suppose. Combined with the biggest collection of pirates, it's not hard to see who ultimately promoted consoles!

  • icematt12 #18 2 years ago

    Whats to say MW2 doesn't have people "ghosting" games to get the name of cheats? They could possibly afford some with the revenue they made.

  • Mooglepies #19 2 years ago

    I bought it for £23 yesterday (thanks, Tesco Clubcard, I knew you were good for something!) and have yet to try the online component. Singleplayer was simultaneously brilliant and a disappointment.

    Cheaters and griefers do not surprise me at all. I run a pair of L4D/2 servers for a small PC Gaming community and even I have to solve disputes between members sometimes on the ragebaitmachine that is Versus.

  • neems #20 2 years ago

    Dedicated servers, as much as I miss them in MW2, are not mystical anti-cheat devices. Admins can ban people they think are dodgy from their own server, but it doesn't stop them cheating, and it certainly doesn't stop mistakes.

    Banning is not done based on harvesting data of gameplay patterns, or having people ghosting. Official bans are always based on detection of illegal programs / altered files.

    The best thing you can do if somebody is clearly cheating in MW2 is leave, and they will increasingly find themselves playing on their own. Subtle cheaters are more of a problem, but in that case you will most likely never know, and dedicated servers wouldn't change that.

  • paketep #21 2 years ago

    Shouldn't they have banned fourzerotwo also?

  • sneetch #22 2 years ago

    @neems
    Dedicated servers, as much as I miss them in MW2, are not mystical anti-cheat devices. Admins can ban people they think are dodgy from their own server, but it doesn't stop them cheating, and it certainly doesn't stop mistakes.

    It does stop you from having to play with them though and surely that's all you want? I'm not some kind of moral guardian, crusading against cheaters. I couldn't care less so long as it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game. No it doesn't stop mistakes but there tends to be communication beforehand and an appeal process afterwards in the servers I play on (and the bans I've seen and handed out tend to be between a day and a week long, very rarely would we hand out lifetime bans).

    Banning is not done based on harvesting data of gameplay patterns, or having people ghosting. Official bans are always based on detection of illegal programs / altered files.

    Well, VAC handles that either way (in the case of the online games I tend to play) but having an admin there to catch the ones it misses and also to remove the abusive/racist/assholish is a definite plus.

    The best thing you can do if somebody is clearly cheating in MW2 is leave, and they will increasingly find themselves playing on their own.

    Will they? Or will they just join another game where people care less? And another and so on. Do people tend to encounter the same players again and again using IWNet?

    Subtle cheaters are more of a problem, but in that case you will most likely never know, and dedicated servers wouldn't change that.

    Naw you're right there. It comes down to a gut feeling and that's not enough to act on. Or shouldn't be, depends on the server and the admin ofc.

  • sneetch #23 2 years ago

    @JensonJet
    Why are there more talentless PC gamers than anywhere else?

    And on what are you basing that stunning revelation?

  • asphaltcowboy #24 2 years ago

    @jambo74

    "geometry exploit!
    No - just some bad programming."

    What does that even mean?

  • kangarootoo #25 2 years ago

    "No point replying to it, you won't get an answer. Convincing, though - at one point it had a +4 comment score...! "

    Christ, thats says something about the people that gave + karma to a bot :)

  • jambo74 #26 2 years ago

    @asphaltcowboy

    That it is not an exploit but some poor proramming that allows this to happen.
    The item should be solid but is not. I'm sure the code is designed to make it a solid object, yet it is not.
    So poor programming on the object.

    I prefer that to the term exploit as my background is in computer systems.

  • kangarootoo #27 2 years ago

    @jambo74

    So you would say an exploit is someone finding a loophole in something that was built as designed (bad design), whereas the bug in question resulted from something being broken (bad construction)?

  • asphaltcowboy #28 2 years ago

    @jambo74

    Do you imagine that programmers define the collision geometry? Hmm.
    Anyway, it's semantics. He was exploiting a flaw in the game for his own gain.

  • dingo75 #29 2 years ago

    Christ, thats says something about the people that gave + karma to a bot :)

    The bot had 3 points more karma than you have right now. :p

  • kangarootoo #30 2 years ago

    "The bot had 3 points more karma than you have right now. :p"

    I take my low score in that regard as a huge endorsement :)

  • Xensor #31 2 years ago

    All you need to do is watch a killcam or 2 to see some horredous cheating going on such as bots which snap-target any enemy head. Not to mention the random disconnects, failures to "migrate hosts", midgame host migrations, massive lag spikes, tedious intermissions etc which seem to be a permanent feature of gameplay.

  • VMerken #32 2 years ago

    Just me, or was someone else also reminded about Raiders of the Lost Ark there? :)

    Indy: "So now that you have the actual, biblical Ark of the Covenant, what are you going to do?"
    Government Guy: "Top men are on it."
    Indy: "I'm a top man when it comes to ancient relics, so is my dad, and every year we meet the other top men in international conventions. So, who'll be working on the Ark then?"
    Government Guy *giving Indy the "Aww hells no ya din't!" look*: "Top. Men."

  • Farstarbuck #33 2 years ago

    One more reason to stop making games for PC's!!!

    Bunch of cheating piracy led idiots with exploitation being their number one priority.....

  • Feanor #34 2 years ago

    You might want to investigate how much piracy and cheating there has been of the 360 version.

  • Ced_Flanders #35 2 years ago

    Why do people cheat? I don't get it, there is no satisfaction in winning when you cheat.
    Those cheaters could make life for them a lot easier by just writing "YOU WIN" on a piece of paper and tape it in front of their monitor. IW will never be able to disable that!

  • Jazzy_Geoff #36 2 years ago

    i've never understood online cheating either

    there is no monetary reward, no respect is ganined from your peers, surely no satisfaction unless they do it purely to annoy people which is possible I suppose

    rage quits I can understand though, particularly in football games

    LAST MINUTE SCREAMER WINNER AFTER ALL MY DOMINANCE YOU SPAWNY CUNT *poweroff*

    not that I do that either, but I want to
    Edited by 1 at 01/12/09 @ 01:33