Gears 2 cheaters' Gamerscores wiped

By Robert Purchese Published 29 April, 2009

Infinity Ward tackling COD fraudsters too.

Microsoft has wiped the Gamerscores of people cheating at Gears of War 2.

"As part of our regular safety monitoring we have pinpointed a group of players who have unlocked specific Gears of War 2 Achievements through an unauthorized hack," said Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb on his blog.

"Deliberate cheats like these are in direct violation of the Xbox Live Terms of Use and will not be tolerated. As I post this, we've begun taking steps to reset the Gamerscores of the offending players.

"As I have mentioned in the past, this is something we do occasionally to keep the service free of cheating in order to maintain a fair and level playing field for everyone," he added. "If you play fair and earn your achievements without glitching or cheating, you have nothing to worry about."

Call of Duty 4 - another of Xbox Live's most popular pursuits - also aims to outlaw cheaters. Infinity Ward's outspoken Rob Bowling confirmed via Twitter that a new COD4 patch will "eliminate the cheaters".

You're only cheating yourselves.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • MisterCraig #1 3 years ago

    What is with the achievement obsession. My mate wont buy any game not on 360 because he doesn't get to add to his Gamersore!

  • muscleblade #2 3 years ago

    Good news.

    I hate cheaters.

  • the_dudefather #3 3 years ago

    "Microsoft declares 'fuck this shit' and sets everyone's gamerscore to zero"

  • bad09 #4 3 years ago

    "If you play fair and earn your achievements without glitching or cheating, you have nothing to worry about."

    However, If you do feel you need to cheat to earn your little "medals" and make your life better you have everything to worry about.

    I don't understand the obsession with 'em. People cheating, scouring the net for early achievement lists, playing crap for easy ones etc. Some of the crap on my profile have 0 against them where they went back and even the good ones rarely have 1000, do I care? no, I have a life and use the time I have PLAYING the game.

    Of course I'm not denying it is cool when that little message pops up unexpected (got a 100 wins on SF4 recently, made me smile), but really do they matter that much to cheat.....

    / goes off to search for 1,000,000 flags in AC....

  • DoctorZoidberg #5 3 years ago

    I'm with MisterCraig on this one. I've a modest 7000 ish score, but thats accumulated over a lot of games. Whilst i do appreciate the odd achievement, i never set out to get them all. The most for one game is circa 800 which is incidently on COD4.


  • TruWari3r #6 3 years ago

    I guess this has to do with the may "100" ranks out there in the game.

  • RustyBullet #7 3 years ago

    Ban the fuckers

  • muscleblade #8 3 years ago

    I like to get most/all the achievements on the games i love. I recently got 1200/1200 on RE5 for example. I loved every minute of it too. Cheating, boosting and doing boring things just to get an achievement is crazy though imo.

  • miiiguel #9 3 years ago

    They also should paint their gamertags green like they did a year ago, with the gamesaves hack.

  • ruttyboy #10 3 years ago

    What CoD4 cheating are they referring to? Just the glitching? I hardly see that anymore, but then I only play hardcore, maybe it happens a lot on the other modes?

  • metalangel #11 3 years ago

    Achievements are just the modern equivalent of high scores... people used to be obsessed with beating those too.

  • LiveForever #12 3 years ago

    So lets see Ms/Epic. You release GW2 with broken multiplayer, you do nothing. Release and charge huge amounts for 3 maps and extra gamer score, multiplayer still broken. Now your trying to fix by removing scores from people that were stupid enough to pay you for it? Great !!! Its not peoples fault epic have terrible network coders.
    Edited by 2 at 29/04/09 @ 10:07

  • bad09 #13 3 years ago

    LiveForever easy way to fix MP is do what I did.

    Trade it in for something that works and when the inevitable GOW3 comes along don't buy it. That's my plan. ...

  • LaNiCoR #14 3 years ago

    Cheaters everywhere, u seen the times on Left4Dead Survival mode??

    Just demotivates people to even try.

  • Toothball #15 3 years ago

    @Raajaa:

    My friends and I have an agreement that if any of us are caught with Avatar in our list of games played, that person would be permanently ostracised. I don't think anyone here would be wrong in clicking that Ignore Poster button.

  • Mayhem64 #16 3 years ago

    @TruWari3r - yeah that was my most immediate thought as well, and I've come across about 25-30 people online with it. Only about 2-3 of them I'd say were actually good enough that they might have a chance of getting that far legally (given time). As I know a few on my friends list who glitched it, have to see if they've still got it or not later this week...

    Still wish they could do something about the lag switching...

  • penhalion #17 3 years ago

    I'm with bad09 on this one. I have one game with the full 1000 and that's phantasy star. Just completing the game gives you the 1000 as the main story doles out the points for each boss beaten. There is litterally no way NOT to get 1000 on phantasy star. Other than that I don't have a single game with the full amount of points. I play for the fun of it and rarely actively look for the extra points.

    I guess achievements are good as they let you prove you've done something in a game when everyone is calling you a lair. They shouldn't be the sole aim for playing a game though as that's just plain silly.
    Edited by 1 at 29/04/09 @ 11:16

  • XdarXideX #18 3 years ago

    I can understand both sides of the Achievement obsession arguement. I used to hate the idea of the achievement points but rather liked the actual achievements themselves as it adds to the longevity of a game without having to resort to multiplayer. It gives me extra things to do and I feel I get more of my money's worth out of a game. Of course, that's not always true with every game but for the most part that's how it is.

    As for the points obsession. It's a leaderboard thing. A friend of mine started a mini leaderboard which included myself and many of his friends. Consequently I now know most of these people as actual friends. On a larger scale of hacking save files to have the highest score in the world... well that's just retarded.

  • collateral89 #19 3 years ago

    i have a ps3

  • darkphoenix #20 3 years ago

    It's not the score that counts, it's the achievement itself and what it takes to unlock.
    Only fools look to the overall score...

    I have my 360 since 2006 and I only recently reached 20 000gs.
    I like to complete my favourite games and unlocking challenging ( not ridiculous ) achievements.

  • TruWari3r #21 3 years ago

    @Mayhem64

    Well let's just think this through, new title update, everybody played a lot of the game and the new maps, ranking up went quickly

    Yet still I didn't see anyone above 30

    Then all of a sudden a lot with the "100" and claim they have it "legit".

    I play this game everyday and I see a lot of 50, 40, 30 and below. I've seen a couple of 60's but no 70's, 80's or 90's.

    I've seen a whole lot of 100's, more 100's then 50's. Since each next rank needs more xp that's just not feasible and I assume this pisses epic off severely since this might hamper their matchmaking and it means there's no more punishment for quitters (quitting is minus xp but once you're a 100 this doesn't matter anymore).


    Regardless though, I wish they would spend more time fixing the lag. I really notice it when I'm playing with yanks instead of with other Europeans unless it's on the very rare occasion that I'm host.

  • anephric #22 3 years ago

    "What CoD4 cheating are they referring to? Just the glitching? I hardly see that anymore, but then I only play hardcore, maybe it happens a lot on the other modes?"

    I imagine they're finally going to do something about the modded controller gimps. I think Treyarch already have in WaW.

  • SixFootHalfling #23 3 years ago

    "It's not the score that counts, it's the achievement itself and what it takes to unlock.
    Only fools look to the overall score..."

    Exactly, Survive 1 million on Geometry Wars > any other achievement

    "What CoD4 cheating are they referring to?"

    You can do the GoW glitch to gain achievements on COD4, i.e. change account, finish one mission and get all the achievements.

  • IneptPercy #24 3 years ago

    I really don't see the point myself, playing games and cheating to win must take the fun out of winning, as for achievements they are just a side effect of me playing games I don't really care for them.

  • ps3owner #25 3 years ago

    so is this an Xbox360 fix only? I am not sure about the top 100 list in COD4 on the ps3 either to be honest... maybe they should have a closer look at the stats there as well. (talking about the online lot).

    maybe there is no cheating on the PS3... I highly doubt that though, some of the fuckers ppl on there are blatently invincible ;).

  • Gebadire #26 3 years ago

    Good news for CoD4. It's been really grating my goat of late, as there have been some arseholes playing who just float around the map ending with 100+ kills for no deaths. I personally don't see the appeal...but it'll be good if they get kicked off...

  • Azazel #27 3 years ago

    As with games as with reviews as with everything ever: If you add rankable numbers to something it automatically becomes a tard magnet.

  • MKorkia #28 3 years ago

    Many people doesn't seem to understand what is cheating and what is not:

    Following internet walkthroughs to get 1000/1000 points -> no cheating.

    Leaving multiplayer game on for the night while you sleep to get "Play five hours online" achievement -> no cheating.

    Taping firebutton stuck to get imaginary "Fire million bullets" achievement -> no cheating.

    Hex-editing your savefile to get more money, weapons etc -> cheating, may get you banned.

    Using savefile downloaded from internet to get 1000/1000 gamer points -> cheating, may get you banned.

  • Mayhem64 #29 3 years ago

    @ TruWari3r - what I meant was that only a couple of people I've played who had level 100 were good enough to possibly get that achievement down the road. I didn't mean now as of this minute they could have racked up enough points to get it. Though you don't know, I've seen King Of The Hill gametype abused for points whoring in a large manner recently (basically one team was so much better that they spent most of the game, some 20 minutes or more, killing the other team and deliberately not getting the area points). Highest rank I've seen outside of 100 as of today has been 61. As for myself, I'm sitting on 39, close to getting 40. My original target of hope was to get to 50, so perhaps I'll be there by end of next month...