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Shadowbane Hacking Redux - Guild Bannings

Posted by simoniker on from the deserted-guild-cities dept.

Thanks to Shacknews for pointing to a report on Gamerifts.com tracking the results of the investigation into the Shadowbane MMORPG hacking. According to a post on the official Ubisoft forums reprinted there, "..all of the members from the Guild Invictus were banned from Shadowbane for using teleport exploits, many of which culminated during the events of May 27th and 28th. As all members where banned, all money has been removed from their buildings and their Tree of Life, and the city will be left to die." There's no news on whether criminal charges may be filed, as threatened when the original exploit took place.

4 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. This makes sense by saladpuncher · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A person (or guild) cheating in the game should be punished IN the game. Instead of bringing legal action against the warrior who cheated his way to a +25 Vorpal Sword of Absolute Killing the character should be stripped of his items and banned. Hopefully any characters "harmed" in the exploits will be returned to full status and given a few experience points, or what-not, for having survived the temporal disturbance (or whatever else they are going to call it).

    1. Re:This makes sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There is something neat about having a deserted city. It would be even cooler if the whole thing had been incorporated entirely as an in-game event, with some sort of deity punishing the violators. I kinda hope they turn the city in some sort of haunted grounds, with the lost souls of the guild terrorizing lost wanderers.

    2. Re:This makes sense by saladpuncher · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not a bad idea at all. Since this is a role-playing game they should all just role-play the events as though some evil god/deity/demon/Q-Continuum thingy took over for a few hours. Leave the city as a warning to those that attempt to use magic (hacking) for evil.

  2. Anyway, it was a hacked client by swmccracken · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm unfamilar with this game and set up, but presumably people paid for these accounts. Are all the members of this Guild Invicitus guilty of abusing such features? I can imagine that various members are innocents that thought they were just joining a powerful team.

    If there's no reasonable evidence that all of that guild are guilty, it seems harsh (no comeback?) (Perhaps they are and I'm just ignorant - I can't tell.)

    Anyway, the servers were not attacked. "UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that the Shadowbane servers were not compromised in any way. The "hack" was only client side, our fears regarding the security issues for our Credit Cards and accounts have been put at ease." states the updated report. Good greif, is this another game depending on client security? (Design flaw - the client will be hacked by somebody in this kind of game and your game should be designed to cope.)

    I *hope* for the players of this game that there was a bug in the server side validation of what the clients were sending, rather than a blatent design flaw.